CHAPTER XVII

_HORSELESS VEHICLES, ELECTRICAL AND OTHERWISE_ (_continued_)

SPEED OF MOTOR-CARS

To motorists the pressing question of the day is _speed_. In England the motor-car was in its infancy when the present law came into force. Before its birth, no mechanically propelled carriage could travel along the highway faster than four miles an hour; but six years ago a determined attempt was made to adapt the law to the exigencies of modern traffic. Fourteen miles an hour was decided upon as the maximum speed, and the Local Government Board subsequently reduced the limit to twelve miles. But these regulations are now out of date.

A few years ago there was a great outcry against cycle speeds. That has died out, not because cyclists ride more slowly, but because the public has come to realise that, with a readily controllable vehicle like the bicycle, the greater speeds are not dangerous. Similarly the public is now much exercised in mind concerning speeds of twenty to twenty-five miles an hour by motor-cars. It will not be long before they realise that these velocities are quite safe under certain conditions, and that the motor-car might almost under any circumstances be allowed to travel twice as fast as a horse, indeed even faster. It is said that this year the speed of the motor-car is expected to approach a hundred miles an hour. The Hon. C. S. Rolls came very near to attaining it at Welbeck last February, when he made an attempt on the flying kilometre record. The best of four runs gave the time of 27 seconds, which is a speed of 82⅘ miles per hour, and 1⅕ seconds better than Mr. Jarrott’s run over this course last year. Whether it will rank as a world’s record is not certain, as the road in the Duke of Portland’s park has a slight favouring gradient. The French official record on the Dourdan road is twenty-nine seconds, a speed of seventy-seven miles per hour, accomplished by both Fournier and Augières. Mr. Rolls drove an 80 horse-power Mors, which he entered for the Paris-Madrid race.

Estimates of speed differ in the most extraordinary degree, and the Hon. J. Scott-Montagu gave to the _Car_ the following humorous table, the result of an inquiry at a police court:--

Miles. “Private opinion of mechanic in charge 12 His opinion when talking to his friends 20 His opinion when in court 8 Policeman’s private opinion 14 Policeman’s opinion in court 28 Farmer’s opinion when a pony was frightened 50 Maker’s guaranteed speed 16 Actual speed 10”

Motorists are evidently assumed to be made of money, if we may judge by the following statement made by a correspondent of _Motoring Illustrated_ this year. He says, “One curious result of a car case, in which I was fined £10 for ‘scorching,’ is that in less than a week I have received upwards of seventy begging letters from charitable societies or individual beggars. Motor owner and millionaire are apparently one and the same thing in the popular mind.”

Mr. Leopold de Rothschild, who is entitled to speak with authority on the subject, frankly admits that there is much justification for the irritation in the public mind against motor-cars. He strongly condemns rash driving, but, at the same time, maintains that when motor-car owners obey the law and observe the courtesy of the road, they ought not to be looked upon by coachmen, cyclists, and pedestrians, as the enemies of mankind.[9] Nevertheless, he firmly believes that the dislike of motor-cars will die away in due time, just as did the dislike of cycles. The utmost caution ought, he concedes, to be exercised by drivers in the crowded thoroughfares of large towns.

On the question of their importance generally in relation to British industry Mr. Leopold de Rothschild says, “We should foster them by every means in our power. At the beginning not a single one was produced in this country, but at the present moment some of the machines turned out in English workshops rival those of the very best French make. In recent contests on the Continent, too, English cars have more than held their own. It is sometimes complained that the machines make a great noise. That defect is being gradually cured. Then it is urged that they raise a tremendous dust as they speed along. That evil is also being remedied, and will disappear altogether if the experiment of pouring petroleum on the roadways should prove successful. Where the motor-car is extremely useful, I consider, is in enabling people to go across country to attend hunt meets and visit distant golf links. Then, again, see what encouragement is given to wayside inns. When in Scotland the other day I visited a friend who lived twenty-five miles off, and did it comfortably between luncheon and dinner, and that, too, without endangering the life of myself or anybody else. I regard the motor-car as a source of intense enjoyment. Allow the owners greater freedom, but take care that in return they loyally observe the regulations which are framed by competent authorities for the safety of the public.”

MOTOR-CARS AND PUBLIC HIGHWAYS

Who can place a limit to the development of motors! The time may arrive when tram lines will disappear, the roads themselves being of steel and forming a broad rail upon which self-propelled coaches, omnibuses, cabs, and cars will ply in every direction, and far and wide into the suburbs. This is the idea of Mr. A. A. C. Swinton, who also thinks that eventually motor-cars will drive tram-cars out, because, as he says, “Tramways are merely a smooth place on a rough road, with a groove to keep the wheel in a smooth place,” and as one day the whole road will be smooth the tram-rails will disappear.

Something similar, I take it, was in Mr. Balfour’s mind when, in 1901, writing to the Warden of the Browning Settlement in Camberwell on the subject of homes for the workers, he said:--

“What I am anxious people should bear in mind is that trams, railways, and ‘tubes’ by no means exhaust the catalogue of possible improvements in transit; indeed, I am not sure that they are the means of communication for relatively short distances which some years hence will find most favour. What I should like to see carefully thought out by competent authorities would be a system of radiating thoroughfares, confined to rapid (say, fifteen miles an hour or over) traffic (that is absolutely essential), and with a surface designed, not for carts or horses, but for some form of auto-car propulsion. If the local authority which designed and carried out such a system chose to run public auto-cars along them, well and good. But this would not be necessary, and private enterprise would probably in time do all that was wanted. In such a thoroughfare there would be none of the monopoly inseparable from trams, the number of people carried could be much larger, the speed much greater, the power of taking them from door to door unique, while there would be none of the friction now caused when the owners of the tram lines break up the public streets. It may be urged--and, perhaps, with truth--that at present the auto-car industry has not devised an absolutely satisfactory vehicle; but we are, I believe, so near it that the delay ought not to be material.”

“It is, of course, obvious,” he continued, “that the present difficulty of locomotion in our streets is almost entirely due to want of differentiation in the traffic. We act as the owners of a railway would act if they allowed luggage trains, express trains, and horse-drawn trams to run upon one pair of rails. The radiating causeways, as I conceive them, would be entirely free from this difficulty. Neither the traffic of cross streets, nor foot passengers, nor slow-going carts and vehicles would be permitted to interfere with the equable running of fast cars. There would be no danger and no block; and as the causeway would be connected at intervals with the ordinary road and street system of the district, and would melt into that system at either end, every village in which there were enough residents who had to be in London at a fixed hour every day could have a motor of its own. It might be well worth a manufacturer’s while, I should suppose, to lodge his workpeople out of London, and to run them to and from his works.”

No electrician living can predict with certainty what the motor-car may _not_ result in.

One thing only is probable--that our metropolitan streets will soon be congested with vehicles to such an extent as to leave no space for horses. And then will come the complete victory of the automobile.