Rules of the Road
I
To say that automobile accidents are caused by carelessness on the part of the motorist is like saying that deaths are caused by cessation of function on the part of the heart. Of course. But what has been said says nothing.
It is similarly futile to place the blame for accidents on youthful, or aged, or crippled, or half-blind, or intoxicated, or foolish drivers (in strict accordance with one’s favorite prejudices), although each of these groups contributes its part to the problem, and a word will be said later regarding the effect of repeal on accidents. Nor is the weather, the roadway, or the mechanics of the car primarily at fault, although these too cause their certain share.
No. It is impossible to explain away the fact, patent to anyone who cares to review the simple statistics, that most accidents occur in clear weather, on paved, dry highways, and that they involve drivers who are experienced, physically fit, and sober, and who deem themselves cautious.
Strictly speaking, the bulk of the damage is done — and it is a woeful bulk of damage indeed — not by carelessness, a word which may mean anything, but by little, specific careless acts which can be isolated, studied, and, happily, avoided. There is in force in the United States a body of driving conventions the habitual violation of which is suicidal, but the observance of which may very well carry a person through a lifetime of safe driving. These conventions are the basis of our legal driving codes and they are based, in turn, upon these codes. Little matter whether the hen or the egg came first.
Frequently the codes are violated by drivers; sometimes they are grossly violated by city councils and state legislatures. As an instance of the latter type of case, I might cite the law in Illinois which provides that all state highways shall be ‘through’ highways and the driver on them shall have the right of way — except on those state highways numbered higher than 46! Despite such rhymeless and reasonless regulations, however, one can be safe by obeying the conventions as they are generally followed.
It is the purpose of this article to summarize these sane conventions, and it is hoped that the reader will honestly analyze his own driving habits as he is aware of them. If he must say to himself, ‘I am guilty of that,’ or ‘Occasionally I violate this,’ may he make a conscious effort to break himself of the bad habit. After all, it is his skin which is at stake. The best drivers are called upon but seldom to exhibit great agility in extricating themselves from dangerous situations. They rarely get into these situations.
While the deaths and injuries caused by automobile accidents are leaping to new high levels this year, — the reasons for this will be mentioned later on, — one can console one’s self by reflecting that, just as it takes two to make a fight, it usually takes two to make an accident. If a person is really careful, he can not only avoid contributing to the cause of an accident, but also avoid one which might be caused by the other fellow. Accidents involving two automobiles which are caused solely by one of the drivers are so very unusual that they can be left out of this discussion.
II
In spite of occasional exceptions, most driving rules are reasonable. Even those that do not appeal to one’s common sense are a great deal safer to observe than to violate. One must remember that signs, signals, and traffic policemen are supposed to be of mutual benefit to motorists. One stops at a ‘ stop ’ sign before entering a ‘ through ’ highway and grumbles to one’s wife that nobody was coming in either direction for blocks. But what a lawless shambles our streets would be if nobody observed ‘stop’ signs, or if we observed them only when traffic was heavy, or when we were not personally willing to chance a collision! The driver who disregards a sign pits his momentary judgment against the careful analysis of the traffic engineer or enforcement officer. The fact that the sign is there may indicate a danger which is not apparent to the driver. If all hazardous intersections were so obviously hazardous that a prudent driver would naturally stop or slow up, the signs would scarcely be necessary at all.
The fundamental driving convention in the United States is to drive on the right side of the street. That ought to be a startling bit of news to nobody. But even on the shortest of trips one encounters not a few motorists who apparently never heard of the rule. Is carelessness the reason that people drive on the left? Is it just plain lack of courtesy, poor breeding, or stupidity? Could it be another absurd expression of rugged individualism? No matter what, driving on the left is the cause of thousands of accidents every year, including most of the deadly head-on and sideswdping collisions. Some people habitually hog the road — and riding the centre line is hogging the road, too — just as others habitually drive on the right-hand side. Doing one or the other is clearly a matter of habit, and a person can have a good habit and be safe, or a bad habit and endanger himself and others, as he chooses.
A new and important convention has grown up since the arterial entrances to big cities have been broadened into six-lane and eight-lane highways. It is, ‘Drive in the outside lane, except when passing.’ How sensible this is. It leaves the whole centre of the highway free for the faster vehicles, and when anybody wants to spurt around a truck or other relatively slow car, there is plenty of room for him to do so safely. When the convention is not observed, all drivers are endangered. The fast traveler must dart in and around the road hogs; he is forced to pass on the right, a dangerous practice; and sometimes he is so pocketed that he must actually move out into the lanes on the left side, facing oncoming traffic, to get around. It is all very well to say that this driver should take his time. The fact is that people will hurry, and if a driver insists on crawling down the middle of the highway he is likely to be the direct cause of a serious crash. Do not think that I am encouraging or even condoning excessive speed. I am merely pointing out one of the more important ways in which drivers who do not speed cause accidents on the road.
But before getting too far into this discussion it would be well to point out the different sets of conventions that must be considered. Since most accidents in cities occur at intersections, the conventions governing approaching them and turning on them might well come first. Then there are the rules of driving between intersections; most accidents in rural areas occur here. One must realize also that there are conventions to which one is accustomed at home and others to be observed abroad. And surely urban and rural driving are not the same.
III
Beyond question the rule at intersections which causes the most trouble is that one which deals with the right of way. The basic rule is simple enough to express and is easily understood, but there are as many possible combinations of circumstances as there are permutations in hands in the game of poker. The driver approaching an intersection has the right of way over the vehicle coming on the cross street from his left; and he must yield the right of way to the driver coming from his right. That is the fundamental rule as it is observed generally the country over.
But does the rule hold when one of the streets is a ‘through’ thoroughfare? How about emergency vehicles? How close to the intersection must the driver from the right be before one waits for him — or how rapidly must he be approaching? Similarly, has one the right of way over a vehicle coming from the left even if it reaches the corner first?
The answers to some of these questions are relatively easy. The driver approaching the ‘through’ street, for example, must come to a full stop, after which he may proceed across on the basis of the fundamental rule as it was stated above. In actual practice, he is sensible enough to wait for an interval in the ‘through’ traffic of sufficient length to let him cross without charging into some fast traveler’s path. Many people do not know that in most places, when they are driving on the ‘through’ street, the driver entering from the right has the right of way after he has once come to a full stop.
Emergency vehicles — fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances — have the right of way, regardless of rules, when they are on business. It might be said, though, that they ought to demand this privilege only when they are responding to a call. There is no need for driving a fire engine at top speed back to the station.
The answers to the other questions regarding right of way are complicated in the extreme. In civil suits for damage growing out of accidents, the common law is usually invoked which requires the judge or jury to decide whether the driver did ‘what a reasonably prudent person would have done under the circumstances.’ The best rule to follow is one that anybody can lay down for himself: ‘I shall not dispute the right of way. Maybe it is mine; but how foolish I should be to take it, only to discover that the other fellow did not know it was mine. I have it on good authority that cemeteries are full of drivers who insisted on the right of way.’
What is the proper way to make a turn at an intersection? There is probably no common violation that causes more irritation, more close shaves, and more mishaps of varying degrees of severity than improper turns. Turning right may not appear to be so serious, because the driver must attend only to vehicles traveling in his own direction, but the danger to pedestrians on the crosswalk is very great. How many drivers there are who spin down the centre of the street and suddenly swerve to the right directly across the path of an unsuspecting motorist who was almost abreast of them in a lane nearer the curb, and barely grazing a person on foot in the middle of the side street. When one makes such egregious blunders, one should receive humbly any expletives that the other fellow cares to hurl. Incidentally, it would be interesting to know how many lessons in good driving have been taught once for all time by barrel-chested truck and taxicab drivers who think nothing, on occasions like this, of delivering a curtain speech of rare point and power. One hates to be made the fool in public, and there is seldom an appeal from the verdict bawled out by the frank chauffeur.
Turning left is more hazardous, because the flow of traffic in the opposite direction must be considered. Here, cutting across the path of a vehicle going in your direction may very well force it headfirst into an oncoming car.
The rules for turning are simple. Turn right only from the right lane. Turn left only from the lane nearest centre. Get into the proper lane well in advance of the turn, so that you will not have to jockey suddenly for position. Be on the lookout for pedestrians who are on the crosswalk of the street into which you are turning. Good drivers obey these conventions automatically. If a right turn is coming, they have scarcely to think about getting into the lane along the curb; they do so naturally and without effort. It is one of their good habits.
There are other conventions concerning safe driving at intersections that cannot be omitted from a discussion of this kind. You should never pass another vehicle, particularly a large truck, at an intersection. As you pass, your view to the right is cut off, and the truck driver may be waving a motorist to pass in front of him and into your path. Show consideration for pedestrians by stopping for a traffic signal behind the crosswalk, so that people on foot do not have to walk out around your machine. A dangerous practice is to approach a corner at high speed, depending on your brakes to bring you safely to a sudden stop. To do so frightens pedestrians who do not know that you can stop and are not sure that you intend to. In addition, the driver coming up from the rear may not have brakes as efficient as yours, and he may crash into you.
Hand signals are important. Unfortunately there is no uniformity in them the country over, but your left arm extended far out will in any place indicate that you contemplate some action and give warning of it to the driver behind. As a matter of fact, he can usually tell from the position of your car in the road what your intention is — whether to turn right, or left, or to stop.
IV
Drivers seem to be no respecters of the finest art of the builders of roads and streets. Any place will do for an accident. Even on unobstructed, wide, and apparently safe streets and roads, motorists come to grief. The situation is not quite so bad as this may sound, because more accidents, proportionately, occur on dangerous streets and roads, of course, than on those that are safe. Traffic engineers have done much to make driving less hazardous. But little careless acts, even between intersections, cause a tremendous number of tragic mishaps.
Failing to signal as one leaves the curb is an omission fruitful of accidents. Most people do not know that the car in the constituted flow of traffic has the right of way along a street and that it is up to the driver who wishes to enter the stream to wait for a lull which will give him his chance. Then he must signal to drivers who may come up from the rear that it is his intention to take his place in the line. He should signal by extending his left arm. That is sufficient; but, as with all arm signals, he should not fail to make it in time. A signal is of no earthly use if the driver sticks out his arm and immediately executes his manœuvre. The other fellow has a right to expect the warning in advance.
Weaving through traffic, a practice touched on briefly earlier in this paper, is one of the great dangers to motorists and pedestrians alike. Usually the weaving is done at high speed, and that aggravates a dangerous condition. Stay in place in traffic until there is a clear opportunity to pass properly; then sound your horn and proceed. Do not sneak around one car to the right, cut in front of it, and then swerve around the left side of the driver ahead, trusting to luck that nobody is coming toward you too close. Such weaving is looked upon as a flagrant form of reckless driving and is punishable as such. There is a convention dealing with the spacing between cars, too. A driver is following the car ahead too close if he cannot stop in time to avoid hitting the man ahead should the latter stop.
Just as it is dangerous to pass another car at an intersection, it is dangerous to pass on a curve or hill, and for the same reason — the view is obstructed. One can’t see through the crest of a hill and usually one can’t see across a curve. Many of the most deadly accidents occur because of this malpractice. Frequently three vehicles are piled up — one’s own car, the car being passed, and the machine which was coming out of sight.
Even in parking a car one can cause serious difficulties. Streets normally wide enough to permit of an even flow of traffic become congested and hazardous because of a double-parked car. A machine parked too near an intersection can make it difficult and dangerous for pedestrians to cross, and a parked car has frequently obscured a ‘stop’ sign, causing motorists to speed right into the flow of fast ‘through’ traffic. There is a universal convention against parking near fire hydrants. Doing so may not cause an automobile accident, but if firemen must waste precious moments in getting a machine out of the way for their engine, a life may be lost in a burning building. In a hazardous, complicated world one must be thoughtful of others as well as one’s self if serious trouble is to be avoided.
Railroad crossings offer their special hazard. In recent years several railway companies have become curious about the practices of motorists. Observers have been sent out to watch people drive over crossings. One company reported that on its crossings these observations revealed that 2 per cent of drivers looked both ways before driving upon the tracks; 17 per cent looked in one direction only; and 81 per cent looked neither to right nor to left. Another company reported that in a single year 500 crossing gates, lowered to protect the motoring public, were struck and destroyed by automobiles. Still another stated that, of 96 fatal accidents on its crossings, 54 involved automobiles which had been driven into the side of trains already on the crossings.
A driver who is normally prudent need be guilty of but one careless act at a railroad track — and it’s the end of the world for him!
V
While this paper deals with those driving rules which have the widest acceptance throughout the country, it must be admitted that there is a confusing array of local regulations which the driver from another part cannot be expected to know. I have never yet heard of a motorist so conscientious that he prepared himself for a trip through various states by studying the motor-vehicle laws of those states. Headway toward uniformity of laws and ordinances and signs is being made, if slowly, and before this paper is published the Fourth National Conference on Street and Highway Safety will have assembled under the auspices of the Secretary of Commerce in Washington.
But it is one thing for a group of men, expert on the problems relating to automotive travel and transportation, to draft the best possible body of laws; and it is another thing to have those best of possible laws accepted by cities and states over this country of ours. Too many local officials, proud of their authority and individualistic as prima donnas, have a way of insisting that their pet notions constitute the only practicable solution to traffic problems. Occasionally one of them does present a plan which may be almost as good as the standard agreed upon, but the adoption of it and of others of lesser value gives us the dismaying variety of regulations which makes safe driving so difficult for the motorist who is away from home.
Thus there has grown up a driving convention for the tourist. It is: Do not assume that what is legal at home is legal elsewhere. Take your time. Watch carefully what the majority of drivers do. Then do likewise.
Contemptible indeed is the driver from out of state who wantonly breaks every rule that does not suit his convenience simply because he feels that his foreign license will enable him to ‘get away with it.’
Country and city driving differ in certain important essentials. On the city street, where drivers are always getting into position for making turns, passing on the right-hand side of a car is generally permitted. Many boulevards are divided into lanes by painted lines; each lane of traffic moves more or less independently of the others. The danger is not in passing on the right, but in dodging from one lane to the next.
In the country, on the other hand, a driver takes his life in his hands if he comes up behind a car, blows his horn, and proceeds to pass on the right. The driver ahead will, more than likely, swerve into him, never thinking that he may be coming around that way. The convention is to pass only on the left. There are relatively few intersections on rural highways, and in some places a driver can travel for miles without removing his foot from the accelerator. While this condition ought to spell safety, danger pops up from another quarter. The ennui or boredom suffered by many drivers while traveling mile after uneventful mile reduces them to a somnolent state. Surprising are the number of serious crashes caused when drivers fall asleep and speed right off the highway.
A good convention to follow in country driving has to do with acceleration and deceleration. Too many drivers, passing through thickly settled farming districts, step on the accelerator and keep the machine traveling at forty or fifty miles, or even more, never slowing up until they come to a town. This is highly dangerous, because of the innumerable crossroads, country stores, filling stations, and barbecue stands that dot the highway. For safety the fast traveler should slacken his pace to pass these places, and then make up for lost time, if he must, between them; and it is, of course, absolutely necessary to slow up sufficiently to read directional signs.
Three other conventions should be observed also. Do not advertise your itinerary by pasting stickers and pennants on your windshield and rear window. You will obscure your vision dangerously. If you must stop to change drivers or change a tire, drive completely off the pavement. And always pass to the right of street cars except on one-way streets.
Many a driver from the plains has something to learn before he travels in the mountains. Your experienced mountain driver never throws his car out of gear to coast. The slope may be so steep and so long that his brake lining would be worn down to the bands before he reached the bottom. He keeps his car in gear so that engine compression will ‘brake’ him safely down.
VI
There is an unpleasant appropriateness about the publication of this article at this time. The heavy-traffic and high-accident months of 1934 are upon us. The last six months of every year are the worst. If drivers would avoid their little careless acts now, thousands of lives would be saved. The fact that a driver has never had an accident does not prove his immunity. From one half to three quarters of all automobile accidents are caused by drivers who never had one before.
But there is another reason for the need of greater care than ever on the streets and highways of the United States. Automobile deaths increased 15 per cent during the first quarter of 1934 over the same period of 1933. If this high rate obtains for the rest of the year, no less than 36,000 people will have been slain by motor vehicles before December 31 — an increase of 5500 over 1933 and an increase of 2260 over 1931, the worst automobileaccident year in history.
Why are we experiencing this terrific increase at this time? It is not yet possible to answer this question with absolute surety, but one can point out some of the elements which are having their effect.
In the first place, travel by car is increasing. More cars are registered this year than were registered last year. Gasoline consumption has increased, too. Thus the exposure to accidents is greater — but not 15 per cent greater. There must be other reasons.
The speed and power and the easyriding qualities of low-priced cars probably constitute another factor. One can ride at fifty miles an hour in a modern Ford, or Chevrolet, with more comfort and less vibration than were possible at half that speed only a few years ago. And either one of these will travel at a surprising rate. Thus the percentage of high-speed ears on the road to-day is abnormally high.
Repeal of the prohibition laws is having its effect also. In Milwaukee, arrests for drunken driving have increased 65 per cent this year as compared with 1933. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, convictions for driving while under the influence of liquor have more than doubled in 1934. In the city of Chicago there were five times as many accidents involving drunken drivers or pedestrians during the first three months of 1934 as there were during the same three months of 1933. These fragmentary data may not be conclusive, but they point in one direction only, and are corroborated by the opinion of many observers in the field who agree that there are many more drivers on the road to-day who have been drinking than ever before.
All of these explanations, and probably others too, are playing their part in bringing about the tragic increase in automobile deaths. The thoughtful driver can do one thing at least about it. He can correct his own driving habits and studiously avoid those careless acts which continue to cause the bulk of the accidents on our streets and highways. Then, at least he and his family will be safe.