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A. E. Teer
• This year's LDoY competition is under way and the qualifiers from Weymouth and the Isle of Man for the 1971 final are already known. Keeping a watchful eye on things from his Wheathampstead (Herts) home is the National Clerk of the Course, A. E. (Ted) Teer.
When one is involved in road safety exercises, and this has been Ted Teer's life for 12 years, essential qualities include tact and diplomacy and Ted lacks neither of these. He is a quiet-mannered man, always courteous and never ruffled, with the happy knack of getting done those things which have to be done by people sometimes against their will. He is scrupulously fair in his judgments and takes pains to ensure that those who may have been judged against understand why.
As a London Bobby he had his share of beat pounding, and duty with patrol cars and on motorcycles, finding his niche in 1936 at the police driving school at Hendon where he became senior instructor and assisted in producing the driving manual Roadcraft. Consequently, he has indirectly assisted many drivers to pass the Institute of Advanced Motorists' examination. Roadcraft is recognized as an authoritative publication in driving circles.
With a few of his ex-police colleagues Ted Teer founded the League of Safe Drivers in 1953 and he remains the League's chief examiner. He is also the founder of the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers and has been its secretary for six years. Not only does safety fill his leisure time but he is employed by Cadbury Schweppes Ltd as road safety officer; he joined Schweppes 12 years ago and was the first full-time industrial road safety officer in Britain.
Ted Teer believes that sizeable own-account operators should have little difficulty in setting up their own driver-training establishments. He is concerned, however, that the small own-account operator has no real driver-training facility. He thinks the training boards could do more to assist the own-account man who has only a few vehicles.
Even those who have known Ted Teer for a number of years will be surprised to learn that he was a flight lieutenant in RAF Bomber Command during the war and served as a flight engineer. All he will say of his exploits as an airman is that he used to "stooge around" the target area hours before a raid in order to fog up enemy radar screens. It would seem that with his other qualities one could list courage—he still needs a measure of this today as LOGY Clerk of the Course! 1.S.