ethe

a high-road should not be posted with warnings of such side-roads as are themselves fully and sufficiently visible to act as their own warning sign. Thus we maintain the driver's sense of responsibility. On the other hand, minor roads should carry signs warning their users that they approach a major road, because the sight of the road itself does not necessarily convey the further knowledge that it is a major road. (I am using the words major and minor in relation to their traffic importance and not in relation to their width or class of surface.)

The former contrary policy of peppering only the greater highways with triangles is bad, because the man who has been driving in places where there is little traffic, butts unwarned into these highways. It dates from the time when the local authority was not very loth to incommode the through traffic, because this secured the goodwill and vote of the local farmer, carter, herdsman, etc. Some political courage may still be needed to alter the position of the triangles, for it is the local voter who pays for them. In the case of the 'torch of learning' which is used for schools, this should not be replaced though it may be supplemented by the triangle; for here the risk is limited in time, to the hour when scholars enter and issue-say two or four specific periods in each day— whereas to use the triangle when for 22 hours a day the locality is non-risky is to discredit pro tanto the symbol.

The International unification of signs, though a move towards safety, leaves untouched certain hazards peculiar to cross-roads, a topic of lively interest abroad as well as at home. There are three suggested cures under consideration; the first seems to me foolish, the second ill-digested, and the third expensive. The first: to protect such crossings with slow speed limits, I will deal with by an example. I was being driven at dusk to a crossing which was also approached by a 'bus. Our roads were ostensibly of equal importance. Both vehicles stopped. Each concluded the other was going to stand. We were a few yards apart and our paths at right angles. Both restarted and we met. A 'bus is very heavy and I lost the toss. I thought and still think no one was to blame, and that a speed limit at a road junction would not have altered our case; though any limit such as 6 m.p.h. that could be expected to yield useful results, would

permanently hamper all traffic. This and other occurrences, as well as the pedestrian's experience of how two polite strangers will stop and restart so as still to face each other, shows that the real matter to be decided, even after all courtesies have been observed, is not speed. It is, which of the two has, by his direction, some preferential status, i.e., which of the convergent roads is secondary to the other.

The next proposal has at least the merit of predetermining the status of the traffic units, and it does this independently of the relative priority of the roads. It asks for a rule that 'every driver shall give way to any vehicle coming towards him from his right side.' We have an analogy to the rule for ships at sea, and, therefore, the Briton will take kindly to it till he thinks more about it. The expanse of the sea bears so little similarity to our narrow roads, with their frequently invisible tributary roads, that we had best test the rule by an example, assuming, however improbably, that it is universally known and faithfully obeyed: I am travelling from London on the Bath Road; there are many inflowing roads and lanes on my right; one of them bears a milk lorry whose driver is well aware of the existence of the Bath Road, and also desirous of proceeding towards Bath. Either I see the milk lorry or I don't-a matter dependent on, say, the height of a hedge-but, whether I do or don't, the milklorry driver knows that he has been given a right, by which he expects me to yield, and accordingly he makes to drive across my bows. If I have not seen him I may very possibly not make the expected concession, and we crash.

Suppose, on the other hand, that I do see him some way off. Now, my decision as to whether the rule is operative or not depends on how far he is from the crossing and how fast he is going. The rule would 'be intolerable if I must await any and every vehicle, however far away it is on my right, and however slowly it approaches. Therefore, I use my judgment, which is precisely what I do in the absence of any such rule. If the judgment is erroneous we crash-as before. But there is a different degree of risk. The advantage of not having this rule is that both parties are responsible

The rule

and both must take care, instead of only one. is undesirable for another reason, that it allows all sideroad traffic to dominate users of the main roads whenever the side roads are on the right hand of a driver.

The third proposal is as follows: Whenever a road meets or crosses another, one of the lines must be marked as secondary for the purpose of that particular crossing. This is radically different from suggesting that main lines like the Great North Road, the Bath Road, or the Portsmouth Road shall have a prior place throughout. On the contrary, these so-called main lines often cross the heavily loaded link roads between local towns; these local roads are often broader, straighter, and in every sense more important and carry more traffic over the crossing. It is essential not to suggest that the vehicles on either road should have a diminished responsibility. What is primarily to be insisted on is that the driver on the secondary road is held by the warning signals to look out for a major road and all that it implies. In the example I gave earlier of my car and the omnibus, whichever of us had emerged from the secondary road would not have restarted and the collision would have been averted.

In marking the roads the desideratum is to help the maximum amount of free, safe, and speedy movement of traffic while keeping all responsible. The two earlier suggestions fail on this touchstone. The third suffers from the fact that when Governments are poor, delays in the marking of the secondaries at the crossings seem inevitable. The policy of deciding for each cross, or convergence, which is the minor road, i.e. the road to bear the mark of special warning, has this in its favour, that it is a direct outcome of, and continuance of, the policy of putting warning signs in side roads and lanes before they reach main roads. I have suggested that for this specific purpose of labelling the minor road the triangles to be erected therein at the approach towards this particular danger should be inverted-i.e. fixed with the base uppermost. Whether this particular form of warning is approved or not does not, of course, touch the general method of dealing with the danger at crossings. Nor, of course, is the question under discussion an urban, but mainly a country problem.

Not only for the sake of the motorist, but for economic reasons that concern everybody, it is desirable that night driving be made safe, silent, and unobjectionable. Roads which must always be regarded as an investment in favour of the great wealth-producing function of transport, have to earn a great deal to pay for themselves, i.e., to cover capital charges and depreciation. Now, there is a peculiarity about road depreciation; namely, that it goes on by reason of exposure and weathering and earth movements when the roads are not being used at all, and that fraction of road-wear that is due to legitimate use by vehicles is the only remunerative one. Night-driving, therefore, diminishes not only the capital charges but also the amount of depreciation of the roads per unit of transport. Moreover, since it diminishes crowding by spreading the transport over a large time, it gives clearer roads and accelerates the whole. The basis of night-driving is illumination, and the crab' of illuminating lamps is dazzle.

The cure for this evil is, as with many other technical difficulties, closely knit up with finding a means for accurately measuring the evil and distinguishing even small increments of improvement. Mere estimates of an unpleasant sensation are extraordinarily unreliable, and in the matter of dazzle those who most need independent measurements are precisely those who, having some proposed solution, are rendered partial by their hope of success. We may feel justifiably proud that England through the activity of the Royal Automobile Club has evolved, and has secured official acceptance for, what is, so far as I know, the only dazzle measure. The method balances against one another the evil, and the amount of desirable illumination secured by a headlamp. This is a great step forward. It arrived in time to quash a continental proposal of a purely repressive kind, analogous to the speed limits-which might else have spread to these shores-and like any other bad technical legislation have added one more item to the cost of living. It is usual to impute the blame for powerful lights to the need for avoiding the 'push cyclist' of erratic path who has no rear reflector. But it is unfair and foolish to concentrate the blame on one

of the hazards; it evokes a campaign of opposition from the cycling bodies, and retards the progress of the sane public opinion which would be best obtained by a wellbalanced unanimity among road-users, whose interests in spite of the existing acrimony are substantially the

same.

The unillumined backs of cattle, ponies, market carts, other cycles, and pedestrians are as obnoxious to cyclists as to motorists; while dazzle is as much disliked by motorists as by cyclists and pedestrians. However, it is not the pedestrians or cyclists, but the Automobile Club, which has taken the first step towards a remedy. Very careful measures of some thirty or forty devices, adaptors, lamps, lenses, reflectors, filters, etc., have made perfectly clear the order of merit among them. Heavy advertisement by some of the losers will, no doubt, hoodwink the public for a while; but the facts are available for the asking, and the head-lamp makers are to be very much congratulated on their enterprise, ingenuity, and above all on the public spirit which made them submit to public trial. It must be added also that the best devices are by many times less obnoxious than the worst.

The truly courteous instinct that has led many drivers to switch off their light to oblige a vis-à-vis has most unfortunately had to be discouraged after careful trial. It has proved so risky that it is urgently to be hoped that all will discontinue it in favour of the better devices

-at all events until such time as every moving object on the road carries a back light. The millennium, I fear! Meanwhile, I would urge all cyclists for their own sakes and the general good to put a broad dab of white paint on the back mudguard and to carry a small reflector costing about fivepence. Moreover, no head-lights should be used by any one within the illuminated precincts of an urban area, save as a flash signal, to avoid hooting.

Early motorists expected the car to bring relief to town traffic, because it is much shorter than the horsed cart and can carry double the load at twice the pace. Moreover, every twelve horses require one extra horse to remove the mess and bring in the fodder and bedding. Yet congestion has increased, instead of diminishing! The result is astonishing. What is equally surprising is