HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 9817, 22 February 1936, Page 32 (Supplement)

HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

La column for motorists. |

SEEKING SAFETY The American automobile industry is (says the Christian Science Monitor) creating: an army of robots in its effort automatically to keep the motoring public from destroying or maiming itself. The polished motors under their hoods at the glittering motor show at Grand 'Central Palace look orderly and harmless. But the consequences of the speed the motors will develop are suggested in the highway toll of 96,000 lives in the pasl three years. The manufacturers give out a list of safety devices they hav.. perfected while striving to produce the driver-proof machine. These, imposingly, include shatter-proof glass, anti-glare windshields, pre-focussed headlight bulbs and depressed beam, reflex tail light lenses, steel core steering columns, escape-proof rims for tyres, four-wheel brakes, synchronised shifting, balanced axle assemblies, all-steel bodies—here is a world of thinking, mechanically expressed, on the side of safe automobiling. One American-made motor car, as showing to what lengths engineering will go to give safety assurance, contains 36 kinds of steel in its parts. The built-in bumpers, exhaust-proof floorboards, and automatic starting indicate the research work on which fortunes annually are spent. But with the highways becoming more and more crowded, the car makers do not get the full credit due them. Accidents mount. The drivers themselves are obviously the next points of attack in accident reduction. They must be taught that driving is an art, a fine art. It calls for an artist. An artist is a person capable of the most delicate and exact thinking. There can be no loose ideas in the thinking, no liquor. Prom now on (concludes the Monitor) safer driving is going to be a record of improvement in the right thinking of those who drive. BAD CORNERING. One of the most serious driving faults of the day is bad cornering, says the latest safety-first message of the Automobile Association (Canterbury). There is a prevailing tendency among drivers to drive up to a corner and then expect by violent use of the steering wheel to make cars, no matter what the wheel lock might be, perform an impossible right-angle turn. Not only is this a dangerous habit from the point of view of life and property, but it is destructive to tyres and damaging to the steering gear through wrenching, while the strain is no good to chassis and bodywork generally.

This practice of attempting rightangle turns forces the car on to its incorre'ct side of the road as well, and the whole procedure is characteristic of the careless driver. Do not take corners too fast, and before you reach them veer out slightly to the middle of the road for a left-hand turn, and graceful and safe negotiation of the corner will be possible. ==* ULnM 1 SPARKS. jsSIiHl! Experiments are being made in T apan now with the extraction of oil from coal. Soon, it is said, synthetic petrol will be put on the market there. A motor car fitted with two engines, so tKht the front wheels, the rear wheels, or both sets may be used to drive it forward, has been built at a factory in Hamburg. A scientist in the United States Government has advanced a theory that city sewer explosions are caused by exhaust from motor cars, which is heavy and sinks into the sewers. Government control of transport is extending; it is expected that in Tokio a big transport corporation under Government control will soon be organised. One of the warnings issued during the election was against fixing candidates’ cards to the front of car radiators, causing the water to boil. Some of the election propaganda was calculated to make the candidates boil, too. Traffic cops in the South of France deserve a more attractive name considering their method of dealing with offenders of the fair sex. In every case of a caution being given to women motorists during a “traffic week” recently, the admonition was accompanied with a bunch of flowers]. A special “office for liquid fuels” has been created in Italy to take absolute control over the purchases of petrol and other liquid fuels. All sales of petrol to retailers must be made through the office at fixed prices. In addition, petrol must be supplied to motorists only through pumps and not in tins. “Traffic lights” have been installed over a door in an English county school, leading to the headmaster’s study. When the headmaster does not wish to be disturbed a “red” light shows, and the word “busy” appears above it. If •he is disengaged an “amber” light shows -with the word “knock.” This is followed by a green light and the words “come in.”