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

BRAKES FAILING TO HOLD round at right angles, if the brakes will not hold, should be a potentially necessary scheme of action in the driver’s mind. Always remember that if the brakes will not hold, in the first few yards, when the car is beginning to gather momentum, there is less and less chance of them holding sufficiently to arrest progress, as the momentum increases. Consequently, the instant the fact that the brakes will not hold is once a matter of absolute knowledge in the mind, select the better side of the road and promptly swing the car round into it. It may be that a wing is damaged, or it may even be that the bodywork at the back may be damaged. If so, it is bad luck. It must distinctly be remembered, however, that any hill of length, with a bend or two in it, should not be thought of as possible of negotiation at speed backwards by the average driver. As a matter of fact, to take a comer or severe bend backwards at good speed is a feat which would baf&e the judgment and ability of even the most expert drivers, to say nothing of the possibility of meeting anything on the hill. In the writer’s attempts on various cars to climb the test hill at Brooklands not only has the engine failed to negotiate the climb on the 1 in 4 part, probably in about a dozen cases, but the brakes also failed to hold the car. In each case it was instantly swung round into the grass bank, striking it at a speed of only a mile or two an hour with the near side rear wheel, and then, of course, it was only a matter of waiting for one’s friends, or other assistance, to pull the car to the top by means of a tow rope. Of course, the circumstances there are favourable for such a manœuvre, but at the same time one must remember that it is rather more often than not that excessively steep and dangerous hills have to be tackled in country districts where there is often a grass bank,, hedge, or something nice (under the circumstances) at the side of the road. Even if there is a pathway with a reasonable eurb, if the manœuvre is done sufficiently G9