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

HOW TO DRIVE A MOTORCAR quickly, it is highly improbable that any damage will result. Brakes and the Skidding Question Most drivers will probably have noticed that under certain conditions the quick application of the brake has a tendency to cause the car to skid. Now the choice of the brake applied can minimize this trouble. If one has a metallic ùon-skid on one rear wheel and a rubber tire on the other—whether the road be greasy or dry—a sudden application of the differential brake is likely to cause the car to skid. In such cases it is preferable to employ the brake acting directly on the drums of the rear wheels, as if this is provided with a proper whiffle-tree or equivalent balance gear, then the slower speed application of the power being applied directly to each wheel is not so likely to cause a skid. To a considerable extent, when one wheel tends to slow down quicker than the other, the balance gear comes into play again, whereas with the differential-applied brake no differentiation can be made between the various wheels according to the different coefficients of friction which they possess relative to the road surface. Not only so, but the grip is more sudden, and it is the suddenness that causes the side-slip. If one has metallic non-skids on both rear wheels, as many large cars have, then this advice does not necessarily hold good. Unless there is a distinct difference in the road condition under the one wheel compared with the other, or a noticeable difference in the weight upon the wheels under consideration, the differential braie will usually manage to proportion the application of power pretty evenly; in fact, in some cases better than the whiffle-tree balance gear can do. Similarly, if both the wheels have rubber tyres of similar grip, here again there is not much to choose in the matter of which brake to employ. The main idea, however, in all such cases, is to remember that the greatest pressure on the pedal is by no means neces- sarily the greatest braking efficiency. When the wheel is stopped against rotating and is sliding along tlie> road, 70