How To Drive A Motorcar
A Key To The Subtleties Of Motoring

 HOW TO DRIVE A MOTORCAR Sometimes when travelling at a good speed where one imagines everything to be clear, and it is suddenly found necessary to put on the brake very much quicker than it is ever anticipated (either on a greasy road or dry road), a good driver will perhaps have as many as half a dozen of these corrected, skids, taking off and replacing the brake in exactly the right order in each one, carefully preventing the car from getting out of control beyond a swing of perhaps a yard or so. It must be remembered in this connection that the highest braking efficiency of a car is never obtained by having locked wheels, and unless the driver is thoroughly experienced and collected in his control of the car in a case of emergency he is inclined to think that he has done everything possible by putting the brake on to its full extent. Such an assumption, how- ever, is quite erroneous. A series of dabs, each one tending to cause a skid which is corrected by steering against it, then straight again for the fraction of a second, another dab of the brake and another skid and so on, is very much more efficient as the quickest means of reducing the speed of the car. A thoroughly capable driver—on a car which he knows—will, in cases of emergency in traffic driving, frequently execute such a manœuvre and skid his car within a few inches of the traffic at his side, and yet what looks like a lucky escape from a collision is neither more nor less than a perfectly-executed scientific move- ment. There are also some occasions when racing the engine and letting the clutch in suddenly may be brought to the aid of the aforementioned movement actually to cause a skid, but that is getting rather beyond the limits of any except the most expert drivers, and consequently it will La ae well perhaps not to pursue the subject further. Once again, it is well to point out that the informa- tion, given is not intended to be used as an ordinary driving proposition, but at the same time it is seriously suggested to the reader that a knowledge of the manner of controlling a skid of the rear wheels is an item of 112