The Whitewright Sun (Whitewright, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 8, 1935 Page: 7 of 8
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Banks
Believe
This bank is always seeking new business
friendships with men whose character and abil-
ities entitle them to credit.
The First National Bank
Member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
This means that no tangible form of wealth
such as real estate, stocks, bonds, or commod-
ities have been pledged by the borrowers to se-
cure repayment of these loans. They are, how-
ever, secured by a far more valuable pledge
than tangible wealth. Back of each loan is the
proven integrity, the good faith and determina-
tion of the borrowers to carry through to a suc-
cessful conclusion the purposes for which they
made these loans.
The banks of this country are now lending
some seven billions to borrowers in what are
generally classed as “unsecured loans” for busi-
ness purposes.
—in finding reasons for trusting people.
| a line of standing
A Cinch
The chairman of the State Central
Committee was receiving reports
from the county committees.
“Things never looked better for a
clean sweep for the Republican tick-
et than they do this fall,” reported
one county committeeman. “It’s dol-
lars to doughnuts that we’ll even
elect the candidate for judge of pro-
bate.”
“What makes that so important?”
the chairman asked.
“Well, you see the Democrats put
up a man who had only one arm four
years ago and we’ve never been able
to overcome the appeal of that empty
sleeve. But he’s our meat this time.
We Republicans have nominated a
man who has lost both arms and is
paralyzed from his ifips down!”
and get a new one.
Be that as it may, the real diffi-
culties in a blowout begin when the
startled driver jams down the brake
pedal, with a tire suddenly gone flat
and the whole balance of the car out
of plumb. Probably the best advice
for the amateur is to keep a firm grip
on the wheel, take you foot off the
gas, and let her coast to a standstill.
Speaking of fallacies, skidding
likewise deserves brief mention.
Above all, beware of the shark who
tells you how to “control a skid.”
The very word means that the car is
already out of control and will re-
main so until the skid stops. And the
only possible way to “control” is to
follow the same procedure used in
“controlling” a wife: i. s., let her
have her own way!
To be sure, in a side-slip you
“steer into the skid” all right—pro-
vided the oncoming traffic and road
conditions permit. With that same
proviso, you leave the clutch in and
feed her a little gas in the effort to
get the driving wheels turning again
instead of sliding.
So we come back to the original
premise that there are so many
forces involved—so many physical
and mechanical and mental factors
to be co-ordinated—that driving 60
miles an hour or more on the high-
way is still somewhat over our heads.
But when you appreciate what all •
these conditions are and look them
unflinchingly in the eye, it becomes
patent that it takes something more
than a driver’s license to admit the
average motorist into the elite circle
of Mile-a-Minute Men.
Ninety-six thousand motor deaths
in the past three years seem to prove
the point!
to give her a little more gas, not less,
and to leave the brake alone. Thus
only can he hope to get the necessary
extra power into the driving wheels
to counteract the side-swing.
Many Mile-a-Minute Men get into
trouble in the act of passing. Being
poor judges of distance, they cut in
on the other fellow and provoke a
smashup. Or, being unfamiliar with
v hat’s going on, they fail to realize
that passing one other car going 60
miles an hour is equivalent to passing
j cars 275 feet
long. And, having bitten off more
than they can chew, they’re in hot
water when the approaching automo-
bile pops into view.
The really smart driver remains
75 fSet back of the car ahead at as
nominal a speed as 40. If he has to
get closer he slows down. And if
he’s going to pass he never steps on
it until his car is out in the passing
lane and ready to go, for that leaves
him room to duck back if he has to.
So far no mention has been made
of the hazard of blowouts at high
speeds, because this is a danger
greatly overrated where modern
tires are concerned. Skids cause
more trouble, yet even they account
for only 5 per cent of our fatalities
as against about 1 per cent for blow-
outs. But some of the fallacious
ideas about the latter merit mention.
Chief among them is the theory that
a blowout, especially in a front tire,
will inevitably throw a car off the
road. It is the driver rather than the
tire who puts the car in the ditch.
The fact that a rear blowout is
often more serious than a front one
is evidenced by the fact that many
tire test drivers prefer to run the
older tires on the front wheels rath-
er than on the rear. This is not rec-
ommended for nonprofessionals, for
the simple reason that a trained rac-
ing or test driver can sense an im-
pending blowout minutes before it
comes, and is, therefore, ready for it
with a death-grip on the wheel.
Those fellows likewise know enough
to be gentle with the brakes, if, in-
deed, they touch them at all.
But for the average motorist, driv-
ing along with a. three-finger grip on
the wheel and a wandering mind, the’
forward blowout is serious because it
will pull the wheel out of his dainty
grasp. Once that happens at any
real speed, Samson himself couldn’t
turn that wheel back against a flat.
Therefore, the tentative answer to
the old argument is, put the old tire
on the back if you have to—but the
only logical answer is throw it away
doing
an
wet
“I’m
tables
Three-
YOUR
HOSPITAL BILL
Ask us about this NEW kind of
Life Insurance today. We’ll be glad
to explain its merits to you.
sec-
feet.
Total
; at
even
Introduce weather conditions, and
you
of CO gas in half of them and defi-
nitely dangerous amounts in 7 per
jamming on the brakes,
through the windshield, and
shiny new bus goes right over the
fence. But even if you brake grad-
ually and skillfully you’ve still got
208 prancing horses with the bits in
their teeth, to be subdued within 226
feet.
What does all this mean in Ameri-
can money? Well, it means that
where a 4-foot margin between your
right wheels and the pavement’s
edge was safe at 40 miles an hour,
you need 8 feet at 60 miles an hour.
It means that at more than 40 miles
an hour the sane driver never turns
his head, but moves only his eyes. It
means that if you step her up from
40 to 60, you’ve got to step up your
“perception range” from about 230
,, feet to around 600; i. e., your eyes
and mind must take in everything
ahead of you up to 600 feet away. It
means that a car going at 60. miles
an hour is nine times harder to stop
than the same car at 20—not three
times, as you might surmise.
It means a lot of things which all
simmer down to the fact that speed
driving is a split-second job; an ex-
acting pastime calling for the keenest
perception, an unshakable emotional
control, and the finest of co-ordina-
tion. Certainly the Mile-a-Minute
Man should be a crack judge of dis-
tance, yet not more than one driver
in ten can measure off 600 feet with
his eye while in motion.
The consequences of our inherent
inability to drive faster than a mile a
minute is graphically summed up by
the accident records, which show that
—will be paid by your Life Insur-
ance Company, if you buy one of
our new policies!
accepted as a
S. H. Montgomery Agency
INSURANCE THAT PROTECTS
Consult Your Insurance Agent as You Would
Your Doctor or Lawyer.
cent.
The drunk driver, of course, pre-
sents a menace which beggars words,
but we’re not talking about him now;
i we’re interested merely in the “had-
been-drinking” case. It is a popu-
lar impression that a couple of cock-
tails won’t hurt anybody. But the
point here is that drinking and speed
driving are two entirely distinct
pastimes which don’t go together.
One medical man has already pub-
lished tests showing that one or two
drinks double a driver’s reaction
time, giving us 132 feet instead of
66, before we get the foot up on the
brake pedal. And another has shown
that the “had-been-drinking” person
! kills or injures two people per acci-
dent as against one for the lad with
the unsullied breath.
The inescapable conclusion of
these sundry facts is the very elemen-
|tary safety axiom that your rate of
travel should be governed entirely by
conditions rather than by the power
of your car.
So far, of course, we’ve been talk-
ing about fast travel undei' fairly
ideal circumstances. We mustn’t for-
get that we needn’t approach the ve-
locity of a gale in order to be going
too fast. Visibility is an extremely
vital detail in controlling speed.
Even in broad daylight it is perfectly
asinine to drive 60 miles an hour to-
ward a blind spot 200 feet distant,
when, at best, you will need 226 feet
in which to stop if you have to. Good
with only one-fifth the traffic.
Obviously, a mile a minute
night is the height of folly, <
though many drivers maintain that
pace. As a matter of cold fact, with
a pair of average headlights showing
clearly for 100 feet, you are contin-
uously driving 15 feet in the dark,
even at the snail’s pace of 40 miles
an hour, because you need
mum
On that basis, 35 miles an
your top safe speed at night.
All of which concerns straight-
away highway travel; when we get
into the field of curves or the prac-
tice of passing, the problem grows
more complicated. Surprising as it
may seem to the fellow who now
takes curves at a faster speed than
we used to average on straight roads
fifteen years ago, the fact remains
that relatively few nonprofessionals
really know how to negotiate a curve.
The result is that despite all our glib
showroom talk about center of grav-
ity, wheel base, unsprung weight, and
what not, the death rate on curves
today is 126 per cent greater than
the average for all accidents com-
bined.
“Too fast for conditions” again—
one of the conditions being centrifu-
gal force, the other being tires. To
the typical driver, terms like “cor-
nering force,” “slip angles,” “radi-
cal loads,” and such are just so much
Greek. But it is only because the tire
engineers have agonized over those
matters that we can hit a bend in
the road at 45. Surely, weight dis-
tribution plays its part, but the thing
which holds us on the road, in the
face of a vicious sidethrust from cen-
trifugal force, is nothing more or less
than the tires, supported by power
from the driving wheels.
This centrifugal force increases as
the square of the speed. Thus we see
that on a curve of 500-ft. radius a 3,-
000-lb. car will get a side-shove of
156 lbs. at 20 miles an hour. Jump
that speed to 30, and the push be-
comes 360 lbs.; step her up to 60,
and you have approximately 1,400
lbs. trying to nudge you into the
ditch.
The reason why so many bad acci-
dents happen on turns is simple
enough: When the driver hits the
curve “too fast for conditions,” fric-
tion is overpowered by centrifugal
force and he feels a side-sway come
on. Instinctively he steps on the
brake—the worst possible move—and
over he goes.
Naturally, what he should do is
slow down before reaching the curve.
But, since he didn’t, his only hope is
a mini-
of 115 feet in which to stop,
hour is
By Harold G. Hoffman,
Governor of New Jersey
This piece is not for Sunday driv-
ers.
It is exclusively for that hierarchy
of motorists who have been driving
more than five years—who know
their cars like a book—who have
never had a serious smashup—who
feel that all the crazy so-and-so’s,
especially members of the opposite
sex- and truck drivers, should be bar-
red from the road.
In short, it is written for all the
experienced wiseacres who are re-
sponsbile for 85 per cent of our acci-
dents today.
Nevertheless, it is no sour-faced
preachment against fast driving, for
ours is the Age of Speed. We’ve got
to move along, else we shrivel up
with dry rot. Hence, the modern car,
which has made an ordinary fast pace
common-place and has put the thrill
of 60, 70, and 80 miles an hour with-
in easy reach of anybody who can dig
up a down payment or its equivalent
in a trade-in.
But, before you begin nagging the
gas pedal, read this extract from a
public statement now two years old:
“Racing on the Indianapolis Speed-
way has gone beyond the physical
limitations of the track for safe driv-
ing, in the opinion of officials, con-
sidering the deaths of five drivers in
the recent race, which was won with
an average speed of 104 miles per
hour.”
Remember, they’re not talking
about Tom, Dick, and Harry on the
highway but about a specially built
track, specially built cars, and spe-
cially trained drivers. And it pro-
vokes the notion that those who talk
of 100 miles an hour on the open
road — well, they’re just talking
through their bonnets.
As a matter of fact, we who now
drive at 60, 70, and 80 miles an hour
are already away over our heads.
Few of us are either physicially or
emotionally equipped for that sort of
thing. Fewer still have the slightest
conception of what we are doing. We
know that the engine has the power,
that the car rides comfortably, that
it seems no faster than 35 did fifteen
years ago—and that’s about all.
Ask this Mile-a-Minute Man about
kinetic energy, for example, and he’ll
surmise that she’s this new Hunga-
rian movie star just come to Holly-
wood. Yet that fellow takes a life-
time of work, an investment of near-
ly a thousand dollars in a car, the
suffering, anguish, and future secur-
ity of his wife and kids—wraps them
all up in a bundle and tosses it out :
of the window to this kinetic-energy
person.
“Hold this for me,” says he.
going to step on it.”
Let’s be specific. Some say, “It is
safe to drive at sixty when the con-
ditions warrant it.” The sole conten-
tion is that such driving is strictly a
specialty and such speeds aue too
great for emergency stops or for the
emergency manipulation of cars
whose steering gear is designed for
parking, not racing. On the track
such emergencies are few and far
between; on the highway they are
common and inevitable. Hence, those
who travel at superspeeds should
know what it’s all about.
The stock retort is: “But I’ve got
swell brakes. I can stop on a dime.’
Yes? Well, Sir Malcolm Campbell
has swell brakes, too—several sets of
them. Yet it takes him five miles to
bring that car to a standstill from
top speed.
You’re no Campbell and your bus
is no “Bluebird,” yet the reference
may suggest something. Granted
that these swell brakes of yours are
perfect, just how quickly can you
stop at 50, 60, or 70 miles an hour?
Go ahead—give a guess—and then
look at the following tabulation (pre-
pared by a brake manufacturer, in-
cidentally) and see how far wrong
you were:
At a speed of 30 miles an hour a
car is traveling 44 feet a second. Dur-
ing the interval of the driver’s men-
tal reaction to an emergency (% of a
second, on the average) it travels
------------ -------- ------------
33 feet. The braking distance is 40
feet. And the total distance required
for stopping is 73 feet.
At 40 miles an hour, the car is
traveling 59 feet a second. Reaction
, distance, 44 feet. Braking distance,
71 feet. Total stopping distance, 115
feet.
50 miles an hour, 74 feet a second.
Reaction distance, 55 feet. Braking
distance, 111 feet. Total stopping
distance, 166 feet.
60 miles an hour, 88 feet a second.
Reaction distance, 66 feet. Braking
distance, 160 feet. Total stopping
distance, 226 feet.
70 miles an hour, 103 feet a
ond. Reaction distance, 77
Braking distance, 218 feet,
stopping distance, 295 feet.
See that item, “reaction distance?”
That means the length of time it
takes you to make up your mind to
put on the brakes after you sense the
necessity for it. Most of us average
around three-quarters of a second,
which is what Ralph DePalma scored
in actual tests. This means that in
approximately the time it takes you
to say SIXTY MILES, your car, go-
ing at that speed, covers 66 feet, or
more than the length of four cars
standing in a row.
Sixty-six feet, and you haven’t got
your foot on the brake yet! If you
hit that thing before the pedal goes
down, the impact will be equivalent
to dropping your car off the roof of
a 12-story building. Or, to put it an-
other way, the wallop would lift 40
such cars 3 feet off the ground.
That’s why a fast-moving coupe can
turn ovei* a 10-ton-truck; it’s why so
many drivers in smashups have the
wheel shoved through their chest and
their legs minced into bits when the
engine comes popping back through
the dashboard.
But let^s not dwell on this. Sup-
pose you do apply the brakes, then
what? Well, the mere business of
braking a 3,500-lb. car at 60 miles an
hour is a little matter that had the
engineers sitting up nights for
months. First of all, the braking
process itself develops upwards of
208 horsepower of energy, or nearly
three times the maximum rating of
your car. This must be checked by
four relatively small brake bands.
Energy can’t be ignored or thrown
away—it must be used somehow.
Therefore, the brakes convert it into
heat—to be explicit, into about 1,-
400 degrees of heat.
In any case, here is a terrific
amount of power running wild. If
you exert all that power at once by
’ you go
your
Do You Drive at Mile-a-Minute Clip?
out of 96,000 motor deaths in the
past three years—
61% occurred on perfectly straight
highways or between intersections;
75% occurred on dry roads, and
84% on clear days;
88% of the cars were traveling
straight ahead at the time;
And more than 90% were
less than 50 miles an hour.
The records show, besides, that vir-
tually all of the increase in deaths
since 1927 has been due to collisions,
and that fatalities on the improved
rural highways have jumped 102 per
cent in ten years.
If you still think you’re qualified
to drive at more than a mile a min-
ute, willy-nilly, then let us face the
fact that all of the aforementioned
theories of kinetics are quite hypo-
thetical in that they take too much
for granted. That chart of braking
distances, for instance, assumes,
first, that the road surface is of the
best; second, that your tires are per-
fect; third, that you are mentally
alert and physically at par; fourth,
that your brakes are tiptop.
Now, there are about 25 different
types of road surfaces, each with its
own “coefficient of friction” or slide-
ability. The best is rough concrete—
and braking tables are calculated for
this perfect surface!—one of the
worst is wet wood block. If you can
stop in 44 feet at 40 miles an hour on
brushed concrete, then allow some-
thing over 500 feet to do it on
wood block.
driving practice says that at 45 miles
an hour you should have a “clear
sight distance” of 350 feet—at 60
miles an hour you need 600 feet of
unobstructed view—at 80 miles
hour you require 1,000 feet.
At night the death rate per acci-
dent on the highway is 51 per cent
greater than the daytime toll, and
again you upset the book. If
want to be sure of a reasonable 50-
foot stop in snow or mud, then 15
miles an hour is the maximum speed
you dare risk. If ice enters into the
picture, then 11 miles an houi' is
tops.
All of which assumes that your
tires are perfect. When this braking
violence of 208 horsepower is loosed,
we’re sunk if the “rubber” is faulty.
Unequal air pressure in the front
tires is all you need to throw the car
into a disastrous swerve in a high-
speed stop, because of the difference
in camber angles.
For speed driving it is absolutely
essential that tires be of the same
weight, condition, pressure, age, etc.,
and the Mile-a-Minute Man who
drives fast with a new shoe and a
worn one on the front wheels is just
a plain fool—not because of blow-
outs, but merely because of the brak-
ing complications involved.
Apart from this, a set of good-
grade new tires will stop a car 77
per cent faster than smooth, worn
ones; hence, when you calculate
stopping distances for your car, pay
heed to the tire condition. The ne-
cessity for these and other precau-
tions is evident from the fact that
out of 3,000,000 cars tested in 1933,
no less than 48 per cent had faulty
tires.
Since 34 per cent of them also had
defective brakes, it is patent that we
must go beyond “rubber” in meeting
theoretical standards of stopping.
Braking is the major problem of the
modern, highpowered car. Yet it
causes not the least concern to the
average driver.
To be sure, 4-wheel brakes are
much safer than 2-wheel brakes—so
long as they remain 4-wheel brakes.
But too often neglect permits them
to become 3-wheel brakes (which
make an awful mess at 88 feet per
second), and more often they change
to two sets of 2-wheel brakes—and
one more Mile-a-Minute Man be-
comes an insurance statistic! Just
how prevalent these faults are was
shown last year when Prof. R. A.
Moyer, of Iowa State College, exam-
ined 1,119 cars and found that one-
third had at least 40 per cent more
braking power on one side than on
the other.
Be that as it may, we can still as-
sume perfect conditions as regards
road surface, tires, and brakes and
yet go wide of the braking
when the extremely variable human
element begins to act up.
quarters-of-a-second reaction time is
fair average, but on
tests lots of drivers come closer to a
full second, and many exceed that
time. The figure isn’t a guess, but
has been ingeniously measured.
Under normal driving conditions
emergencies are unexpected and
many factors slow up response: day-
dreaming, absorption in the radio,
fatigue.
Among tourists, especially, two ele-
ments enter into the problem to a
serious degree. One is the curse of
being too long at the wheel—there
are 100,000 accidents a year direct-
ly charged to drivers asleep!—and
the other is the hypnotic effect of
continuous, straight-road driving.
The type of car, naturally, governs
the degree of fatigue induced by ex-
cessive driving, but in the best of
them it is a real factor. Eye-strain
is something which definitely affects
the entire body; a confined position
which cramps muscles is reflected in
nervous reaction; the seemingly
slight physical exertion involved
plays its part. Considering that a
man moves his wheel 12,000 times on
a 350-mile drive (maybe 25,000
times on subpar roads), using the
same set of tensed muscles over and
over, it is small wonder that he feels
it from head to foot.
Unquestionably, carbon monoxide
is also a definite contributor to this
general situation. Last year, in Con-
necticut, inspectors stopped and
tested several thousand cars on the
road, finding measurable quantities
You Have
Here in
Whitewright
A Printing Service that gives you as
fine quality of workmanship as you
could get in the best large-city
plants, at prices usually charged in
plants incapable of producing fine
printing.
A Printing Service that is unsur-
passed anywhere in Texas, and un-
equaled anywhere in Grayon Coun-
ty.
The
Whitewright Sun
“Commercial Printers”
We are here to serve you, anxious
to please you, and willing to co-op-
erate with you in the preparation of
copy for any job of printing you
may need.
Thursday, August 8, 1935.
THE WHITEWRIGHT SUN, WHITEWRIGHT, TEXAS
PAGE SEVEN
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The Whitewright Sun (Whitewright, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 8, 1935, newspaper, August 8, 1935; Whitewright, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1230700/m1/7/?rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Whitewright Public Library.