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

HOW TO DRIVE A MOTORCAR picture such circumstances. Assume, then, that one is driving along a road at 20 miles an hour; a child or perhaps two children suddenly run out from the path to cross in front of the car, not being aware of its presence. Now, the really capable driver will instantly malse up his mind in regard to the relative speed at which the children are running, and at which his car is travelling, as to whether or no they will have advanced sufficiently on their journey by the time he gets up to them to enable him to pass behind them. If they are so advanced, or intent on their crossing, that their safé return on hearing a motorcar horn is not reasonably certain, then it would be rank bad judgment to sound the warning device, as this is just as likely, with children, to have the opposite effect to the one intended. One might imagine that blowing the horn would cause them to accelerate their speed, but in all probability the effect produced would be to cause them to look round and thus, even unwillingly, hesitate in their progress or even to become uncertain as to whether to run back or pro- ceed. Consequently—and please always remember it —the mere sounding of a horn in such a situation, may be the one and only cause of an accident. The writer has witnessed one such, and if the idiotic driver had not sounded his horn he could easily have cleared the child by a couple of yards. If one is certain that the children under consideration can in point of fact be safely missed at the moment when it is actually necessary to clear them, even, if it only be by a very small margin, then such action as that indicated is the one to be adopted, even although the passage of the car may cause a considerable shock to the children. It is far preferable that they should be subjected to a momentary shock by a narrow or comparatively narrow escape from an accident, than that they should be placed for a moment in real danger of being involved in one. r—4