DANGEROUS JOB

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXXI, Issue 48, 27 February 1936, Page 6

DANGEROUS JOB

MAN WHO CHEATS DEATH CAR “CRASHING” FOR A LIVING Not satisfied with having “crashed” three hundred cars in the last two or three years a young Londoner, known as “Hell’s Driver,” whom no insurance company will accept as a' life risk, is looking fox’ further dangerous occupations. Failing anything else, he has ideas of driving full-sized and powerful cars on a “wall of death.”

He is Frederick S. Foster, soxx of a coachmaxx in Buckingham Gate, who for sixteexx years has driven cars ixx India, Africa, Egypt and England. He has probably been “sacked” more times than any othex’ man, for each time he undertakes one of his “crashing” stunts he xs automatically discharged by the firxn that employs him. He does bis dangerous jobs entirely at his owxx risk, being re-engaged afterwards. Nobody talking to Foster would regard him as a maxi who cheats death for a living. Modest, but with a quiet confidence in his owxx ability to emerge scatheless from the worst of crashes, he xnaintains that, in spite of his dangerous occupation, be hopes to live to an old age. Overturning cars, jumping them over obstacles, and diving them into

rivers, are all in the day’s work to him. People may wonder what is

the use of crashing cars, but motor firms learn many lessons about the strength and stability of cars in this way.

His most dangerous exploit he regards as the last he did —for a film •—in which he drove an eight-cylind-er two-seatex' sports car into a river at 70 miles an hour. “I drove ihe car down a slipway at the side of a ridge,” he told an interviewer, “and it rose 25 feet, covered 75 feet through the air like an aeroplane, and landed in the water on all four wheels unharmed; but, two feet in front of me was the brick wall of an old mill. Another five miles an hour and- *-

“People often ask me whether I know what the result of a crash is going to be . Up to a point I do. First of all, there is the question of speed. I always prefer to do my ‘stunts’ at high speed. “Speed is my most important f ,c--tor. In fact, the motto on which I invariably w'ork is, ‘the faster the safer.’ Once a crash has started I can determine the end of it by my own driving, but that is all. I cannot prevent it happening. All 1 can do is to do something toward helping it to end in the way I want, and

to take care of myself a little. “To show what speed means

me, I did my river dive a second time, but only at 30 miles an hour' instead of 70. The moment I left the landing-stage I knew things were going to happen. The car was like a drunken elephant to control, and eventually landed dead in + he centre of the river in a perfect nosedive. It was touch and go. Had the car turned over I should have been trapped under water, with three tons bulk over me. “However, fate was kind, and the car settled with a splash on all four wheels. I was a little bruised, but safe and sound. Quite a thrill, but to me all in the day’s work. Still Learning. “After sixteen years on the track and three years of ‘stunting,’ I’m still learning to drive. Many people, after a couple of years on the road think they are first-class drivers. My own view is that in driving a car no one has ever finished learning. I still say I am not a perfect driver. “If people would realise this, and if they knew, as I do, the antics a car can get up to in skiddy weather,, they would drive much more cautiously than they do, and accidents on the road would be fewer. “The curious thing about my job is the number of people who ask me if I will crash their cars for them, so that they can draw the insurance

money. Needless to say, I always(orefuse.”