The Motorist.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 830, 1 February 1906, Page 14

The Motorist.

(By

“ Petrol.”)

The Ethics of Motor Driving.—lt is a frequent source of wonderment to a great many people that their cars do not give them anything like the same satisfaction as precisely identical cars give to other people. The explanation is usually to be found in the fact that some cars are driven and . others .are driven well. The driving of a motor car is very similar in, some respects to the driving of a horse. A skilful and considerate driver will get more useful work put of a horse, and yet prolong its life, than a clumsy and reckless John who is for ever sawing at his horse’s mouth, pulling it up violently and whipping it to sudden effort when a gradual coaxing would do better. Exactly the same state of things obtains in the driving of a motor. The most skilful drivers are. they who manipulate their gear with infinite gentleness.

The clumsy driver pushes his change-speed lever over by brutal force, scraping his gears and wrenching every bearing. He lets his clutch in with a jerk which occasions discomfort to his passengers and hastens the day when his engine, transmission gear, and tyres will be on their way to the repair shop. He advances his spark and opens his throttle with a suddenness that makes the car bound forward in a manner which may be pleasing to the novice, but is wofully detrimental to the durability of all the parts, and he jams his brake on with similar violence, fatal alike to the integrity of his tyres and the comfort of his passengers. In traffic, the reckless driver is prone to race his engine and to slip his clutch to a totally unnecessary extent, while on greasy surfaces he drives at such a pace as to court collision with other vehicles or with pedestrians when a sudden check becomes necessary.

To the driver of one or two years’ experience, it is a most valuable object lesson to sit beside a really skilful driver on a car of moderate power, to watch the manner in which the accelerator is utilised so as to give exactly the desired velocity to the engine, to hear and feel the way in which the clutch is used, and to note

how the ignition is advanced and r-e tarded and the throttle opened or closed, so that the varying gradations of speed are effected almost imperceptibly, resulting in smooth and vibrationless progression, at once pleasing to the occupants and gratifying to the owner of the car, who realises how every hammering blow of the engine, every jerky impulse imparted through the clutch to the gear, every forcible application of the brakes, means decreased efficiency of the mechanism and a speedy layingup of the car for repair. The average paid driver’s ideas are usually bent upon emulating the fiercely strenuous methods of the driver of a racing car, whose one object in life is to cover the ground as rapidly as possible; the average paid driver has not a racing • car under his control, but he tries to drive his employer’s car as though it were a racer; it is not a racer, so he over-drives it, and over-driving is the one thing that the good driver is studious to avoid.

The driving of a motor car is, per se, not at all a difficult art; but to drive really well is a different matter, and the man who thinks he knows all about it would be wise to take every opportunity of acquiring experience by sitting alongside a better driver than himself. It is just the same in most other mundane affairs. The billiard player who rules the roost in his own little circle, the champion tennis player on his own lawn, and the cock-o’-the-walk in all manner of pastimes, nnds that his game goes off, or at least does not improve, if he plays only with inferiors; whereas directly he pits his skill against that of distinctly better men, although he may incur humiliating defeat, if he is sensibly good-tem-pered and not oppressed by an overweening self-conceit, he can pick up many wrinkles from his opponent’s methods which will enable him to improve his own play. So in motor driving: A run with an experienced driver will be a liberal education for the man who, prior to such an experience, imagines he knows all there is to know about motor driving.