Drive Differently

Hot Rod Racers #8
April 1966

The experts tell us that over the holiday week ends and the long week ends, the death and accident rate takes an upward swing. What to do about it? They have some good advice to offer and it checks with the same techniques I have used over a period of years. The first sensible thing to do is to plan your trip carefully. Go over the road map and if you can double check with a person who had made the trip before, so much the better. It is a good idea then to put it down in writing. Something like this:

"Take the throughway to exit 34. Then get off an go north for two miles. This will take you to the Shore Road. Stay on this for twenty miles. You will see a gas station with a sign that tells you to turn right for Palmer Beach."

Otherwise you become an "uncertain driver" and that type is a real menace on the road. Misses the turnoff and then backs up along the road! Suddenly stops to check over the details and the car behind barely misses him! Or he looks for some state trooper to help him find out where he is. I consider myself the pilot of my car and my wife is the navigator. She watches for all road signs. Tells me when I am about to leave the main road or if there is a little car trying to cut me off the road. Handy to have a good navigator with you on all of these trips.

I have learned to leave early in the morning when traffic isn't heavy. And I plan my return trip the same way. Because if you have ever been stuck in rush hour city traffic, then you know what I mean. And don't kid yourself, the same kind of bumper-to-bumper traffic can even take place on some of our overcrowded highways.

We have safety belts and this past week end I again found how important a piece of equipment they were. I was in the right hand lane at the legal speed. At my left in the other lane was a car also at the legal speed. Then suddenly there was a cut-in to my lane. And the front of that car was sticking out too much for safety. I couldn't get over to the left hand lane. Down came the brake pedal. And I stopped in time - with the seat belts doing their required job.

I have a very close friend - who is also close with his money and he has lots of it. He'll never use a toll road if he can find some other way of getting to his destination. I find it best to pay the toll and use a high speed road which may have none or a minimum of cross roads and stop lights. We stop about every hour or so and stretch our legs. And then on the long trips, my wife can take over while I can relax and enjoy the scenery.

I am known as "The Fresh Air Fiend." My cents or windows are always open. Why take a chance and get a bit drowsy? You need just that fraction of a second to lose control of the wheel or miss seeing a dangerous situation.

I make it a point of not exceeding the legal speed - and I have seen all kinds of "speed traps." It just doesn't make sense to do eighty miles an hour when the legal speed is sixty - and then spend the next couple of hours before a local Justice of the Peace explaining why you were such a fool. The experts tell you a good way to keep out of trouble is to "float with the traffic." So if for some reason traffic is done to about fifty and the speed limit is sixty - you can run into trouble if you are going to cut in-and-out of traffic on the highway to keep up the speed. On the other hand, don't get caught in back of the driver who thinks twenty miles an hour on a sixty mile an hour speedway is a cautious way of driving.

Last month on a bright day I didn't wear my sun glasses and there certainly was a glare reaction. And if you see a sign as you approach a tunnel, "Remove sun glasses at night. I have a special pair of night driving glasses and you can check on them with your eye man.

Just one other word: When you get off a high speed road onto a local road, you have to cut down on speed and make the needed readjustments for that kind of driving.