"TO THE DANGER OF THE PUBLIC."
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When a Car Driver May Legally Drive at 80 m.p.h. on the Road, "The Inspector" Thinks There Will Be Increased Disability for the Wagon Driver
THE MAJORITY of Tire C.M. readers are by . now quite well aware of the principal recommendations that have been made by the Departmental Committee on the Taxation and Regulation of .Road Vehicles. Users of industrial models generally will have realized the outstanding fact, that, So far as motorcars and motorcycles are concerned, they are in future likely to be freed entire.ly from any abitrary speed limit, but that the commercial vehicle in various classes is still to be restricted to limits on an agreed Kale. Many of us who are users and owners of commercial motors are, of course, also users and owners of the touring car or of the more humble motorcycle, and we have agreed, most of us, that the abolition of a. speed limit is on the whole ,a satisfactory removal of an arbitrary and unworkable restriction—we shall have come to this conclusion as ear drivers and car owners. Those of us who are reasonable and rational drivers will not abuse the confidence thus placed in us. We have all, for years past, systematically exceeded the speed limit; some of us have been "pinched," others of us have been lucky, but we have all regarded the old N miles an hour limit, as being archaic and impossible to observe in the give and take of current road conditions.
Now, with the removal of the limit, it is idle to argue that the high-speed driver—and there are a great many hundreds of them if not thousands—will not, as a general rule, feel that he has a much greater right to indulge in excessive speed on the highway, providing he cannot see for the moment any immediate danger to himself and to other users on the road. He will take it that he is legally entitled to travel at 50, 60, 70, or 80 miles an hour if he can compass it on the main roads whenever, in his judgment, this can be done without actually running imminent risk of being prosecuted for driving to the danger of the public.
This is all very satisfactory to the man who must travel at the highest speeds, but, from the point, of view of the man who uses the roads for industrial purposes of one kind and another and who has no particular interest in turning the main roads into .race-courses, this permission to indulge in unlimited speed, providing that there appears to be no risk to 'other people, brings about a new set of conditions that are alarming and detrimental to the proper development of our road systems and the improvement of the transport of the country.
After all, it does nobody any good, excepting the individual driver, to have facilities to drive at anything in excess of 40 m.p.h. The roads will undoubtedly—and I write in no childishly alarmist frame of mind—become more dangerous to the,users of the ordinary kind of traffic. . It will he impossible to stop every reckless speed mechant always; some of them will be deprived of their licences and fined heavily and some of them will be locked up, and they will not be missed, but not all of them will be so treated. The general average of speed on the high roads will undoubtedly be increased, owing to the removal of any legal limit to the rate at which one may travel, other things being equal.
Now, the commercial vehicle user can only .regard this newly bestowed licence with something akin to apprehension. It is surely more important to the country that the roads should be used for the trans port of commercial freight, whether it be goods or passengers. The motorbus and the motor lorry are far more useful users of the highway than is any private,car owner. It is good for trade and good for those who can afford cars and motorcycles to be able to travel about the country with freedom and without the restriction of rail or similar transport,, but the amount of good it does to the national wellbeing is negligible as compared with anything that" may result from the oiling of the wheels of commerce. "The wheels of wealth will be sliiwed by all difficulties of transport at whatever points arising," as J. Beattie Crozier wrote and as U.A1: quotes so usefully on the first news page week by week.
We hear a great deal of hindrances to the privatecar user by the lorry and the chars-a-bancs and the provincial motorbus. The private-ear user who is concerned with nothing else but his own transport is supremely intolerant of the industrial road user ; as a general, rule, he regards the roads as his for his own special convenience, and he does not hesitate to voice his disgust at any temporary check in compiling a high-speed average. But there is another side to, the case, and a side. that is a far more important one now that we shall undoubtedly at an early date have large numbers of teuring cars on the road which can legally be driven at any speed at which such machines will travel. There will be an -increased outcry from the touring-car user to the obstruction that is caused by the slowly moving industrial machine ; there will be a renewed demand that such machines shall travel only on certain classes of roads, and that they shall rigorously refrain from usittg anything but the gutter. Any condition necessitated by the increased use of the commercial vehicle may quite easily give rise to agitation on the part of the touring-car owner.
It is sound to get rid of the speed limit so far as the reasonable owner is concerned, and little harm will arise therefrom; but, in the writer's opinion, the real fast driver, who will not hesitate with his 35-92 h.p. ear to travel at anything as near 80 h.p. as he can attain, will he a great. hindrance—even a danger—to the commercial vehicle, driver. There can be no objection to the retention of the speed limit so far as the commercial vehicle is concerned, although it must be admitted that the somewhat complicated schedule that is part of the Committee's recommendations will render it a little ,difficuIt for both the driver and the policeman to ensure that all the various axle-weight classes are keeping strictly to their schedules.
There-is little to complain of in the recommends, tions, except to protest that if the car limit must go, restriction of the devil-may-care speed-model merchant must be rigorous and -entirely drastic in the interests of the public and of the industrial community. , Unlimited speed is unnecessary on the road, excepting from the point of view of sport. The roads are not the place for the indulgence of any such hobby. Speeds in excess of 40 m.p.h. should not be tolerated in any circumstances on the highway, and they certainly should not he necessary ; yet we may quite easily,. under the new regulations, which will shortly into to force, no doubt, be frequent witnesses of legal road speeds by powerful ears that will outpace the fastest rail service in the country.