Page:Motors and motor-driving (1902).djvu/74

48 The causes of side-slip are discussed by other writers in this book, but one cannot be too careful in touring, in mountain country especially, to watch the road material as one goes along, and to be ready at any time for very careful driving. There are certain conditions of some kinds of roads when it is almost impossible to drive a motor-car with safety even with non-slipping tyres.

An extremely bad piece of road on a very wet day, for example, is that into Cannes. Coming into Cannes from Marseilles there is a slight declivity just outside the Hôtel Beausite. I have driven up and down that piece of road many scores of times, but on one bad day I found it practically impossible to steer properly. Some of those roads in Kent and other parts of England in which the chalk surface has become exposed require careful negotiation. But the most dangerous road of all is during a partial thaw after a heavy frost. I can offer no suggestion for driving under these conditions. In the course of a winter tour during which one goes in a few minutes from green plains into half-frozen mountain roads, it is difficult to know how to continue one's journey. Mr. Mayhew, one of the best drivers in England, lately described in the gazette of the Automobile Club an experience in which he came rapidly backwards down a hill during a wintry run unable to exercise any control over his car. Fortunately, however, these incidents very rarely occur. I have made a three-thousand-mile journey in France without any occurrence of the kind; on the other hand, I have had a week of travelling on snowy and wet roads on which one had to fight against side-slip all day long.

Of the safety tyres it is yet too early for me to speak as regards their winter use. I have given them a trial on a heavy carriage, and the only objection I found is that they make a little noise when travelling over stone sets, and that they skid on snow. They certainly, however, enable one to stop instantly on surfaces where it would be impossible to check speed with pneumatic tyres. For this particular travelling-carriage I am describing, in the course of the description of which I have