TO REDUCE HUMAN NOISE.
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Some Views on Noisy Coach Passengers—Including Another of This Contributor's Suggestions.
By m
SO MANY garage proprietors are also motor coach.owners that I want, this week, to chat with them about rowdy passengers, a subject which has been taken up again of late by the daily papers, and not without reason. If other coach owners like to bend their ears in our direction and to listen to our edifying conversation, I have no objection Whatever, and I do not suppose that any garage reader has either.
• The first thing that we have got to make up our minds about is that a good deal of the grumbling indulged in. by " Constant Subscriber," "Mother of a Family," and so on, is justified. The noisiness of some char-b.-banes parties is disgraceful, and the annoyance is in. no way lessened by the fact that the number of coaches filled with deeerous persons is overwhelmingly greater than the number that spoils the countryside with songs and howls. It seems natural in all human beings to give every annoyance a value at least 20 times that of a blessing. Nobody, for example, ever thinks of getting up in the night for the express purpose of saying nice and appreciative things to the innumerable eats that cross his garden without uttering so much as a mew. But let only one male member of the feline tribe express his soul in music, and a dozen windows will disgorge imprecations and old boots. One coach load of yelling football enthusiasts that passes one's quiet • country garden on a beautiful afternoon destroys the eerenity of life for the rest of that day. One boisterous passage through a village at dead of night, and sleep is banished for good from many people to whom sleep does not come easily. Thereafter, all coaching parties are intolerable.
Hence, the bad feeling set abroad by the comparatively few noisy coaching parties, and hence the importance of checking this kind of misbehaviour as quickly and as completely as possible.
The Driver Avoids the Responsibility.
Some months back I related in these pages a conversation that I had with the driver of a coach. We dealt, I remember, with the question of unruly passengers, and I asked him what he did to prevent rowdiness. Without looking up my report I cannot recollect what his exact reply was, but it was something to the effect that one against thirty or so lusty fellow a were too long odds for a driver, so that he let his passengers get on with their noise. Of this I remind my present listeners, because it is not reasonable to impose on coach drivers any of the responsibility of securing goad conduct from those they carry with them. The onus is distinctly on the proprietors to prevent rowdiness. How this is to be done is another matter.
Most of the bad behaviour belongs to parties who have clubbed together and hired coaches for the time or run. -Casual travellers who are strangers to one another require time.before they become "matey" enough to indulge in caterwauling and shouting c30
ribald remarks to those who are passed on the r although even • demure and very proper old la have been known to join. in a crooning chorus sta by love-sick couples on the back seat, under influence of a dusking sky and a fresh breeze bi ing the smell of flowers and hay over the hedge the coach purrs swiftly towards home. For rowdy club or works party there is the fairly e tual remedy of the " black list." Many coach ow now have their black lists of undesirables, and not hire to them at any price; but, unluckily, . people can usually find somebody who owns E sort of a passenger vehicle, and who is not too ticidar about anything, save earning money. the black list plan, good as it is in preserving reputations of the best-class firms of coaeh pro tors, can do but little. more than keep their names clean ; it can hardly hinder the real ev:
• any useful degree. Nor can a coach proprietor tect himself by its help from the spontaneous simultaneous bursting forth of good spirits on part of young people, all strangers to one anal but all animated by the same irresistible yearnir express their enjoyment by the time-hone method of singing ." with a loud voice."
Is the Remedy here suggested by "Vim a Fantastic One ?
These are the evils. We will now proceed tc remedy, as imagined by me. I am prepared to my remedy called fantastic, but it will hear sideration. Personally, I am confident that in months or years to come it, or something very it, will be adopted by all up-to-date coach pro torn Many years ago a similar suggestion was r by me in connection with touring cars, but it born before its time, and must have died at b for, to the best of my knowledge, it has not been taken up by anybody.
For scene reason which I do not understand, which I will, therefore, not attempt to explain, i seems to be some relationship between motion music. A German professor of relativity migh able to show exactly what this relationship is; in while, we do know for a fact that the pleasui sensations of motion. are greatly increased if ac ponied by music. A pleasure trip on a river la lacks much if there are no musicians on be and even the slow-moving punt is not quite it should be without a gramophone. the haE felt a wild desire to sing (or shout, aceordin one's vocal abilities) when tobogganing? The merry-go-round in the village fair becomes a and an empty delusion directly the steam r ceases to function, and it is because motor owners do not provide their patrons with music those classes of paeeengers who are least aceust■ to control their emotions feel obliged to expres exhilaration of movement by singing or shoutin
Obviously, there is no room on a coach to a pianist and violinist ; and it would not pay t • so were there room. The strains of a cornet nu
Mg, but they reach too. far and so are annoy) persons who are not enjoying the thrills_ c-f n, besides which the operator's salary would serious addition to overhead charges. • Thus, 21y alternative to employing a driver with the o combine his driving with the manifold accone lents of the gentleman ORO used to come across ts gone by, who was a whole band in himselfuch as he played a drum strapped on his pipes, cymbals, triangle and a -round -dozen instruments—is to install on every coach a musie-maker. I present the notion to 3aoll, proprietor who has not yet thought of it, > any manufacturer of musical boxes or granios who is looking out for new lines to market, g asking that, when theeekhave amassed the Ise fortunes which will certainly be theirs, will remember me in their wills. That is, of if no coach proprietor or manufacturer is !ydeveloping some such apparatus in eecret. What I have in mind is a-really high-grade instrument which could be carried 'under one of the seats, or somewhere else where it would not Occupy valuable space, arid whichwould be driven either electrically or by a spring, wound automatically from the transmission of the vehicle. Its tone should be soft, no louder than is just sufficient to reach all the occupants .of the coach, and I think it probable that a musical :box eonstrueted on the barrel principle would be better than a machine employing discs, because several tunes can be furnished on the same barrel, and may be selected at will, simply by moving an indicator. I doubt whether an instrument of this kind would cost aterrible amount of money, and it should be borne in mind that it could be made to earn its own keep. If. it were constructed to •operate only when fed with pennies, I venture to say that the money receptacle would have to be a pretty big one to hold all the coppers that would find their way into it on every trip.•