Automobile Selfishness

I HAVE a locomotive, built of steel, which I run upon the public highways wherever I please. I have been running it for six years. My locomotive is of only twenty-five horse-power, and weighs little more than a ton; thirty miles an hour is a fast pace for it, and I try hard to keep it down to twenty, — to fifteen, or, on a pinch, ten, where the legal pace is twelve, or eight, — and I ’ll have you know that I pass for an unusually careful driver by virtue of this fine observance of law and the rights of the ninety per cent who cannot indulge in private locomotives. Really, mine is a very modest equipment in size, power, and speed. Forty horse-power is just past the plebeian, among road locomotives. Nothing less than a sixty-horse, twice as heavy as my little car, costing as much as a church, and guaranteed to do a mile a minute without turning a hair, takes patrician rank; and who could expect a roadengine so magnificent to hold itself down to a paltry twenty miles — especially when no spotter is looking ? None, certainly, except the undisciplined among those who are not in the sport.

Dear me! how we have pulled away from the old days when the gay four-inhand, prancing up the street at nine miles an hour, sent the pedestrian scurrying to the curb, there to gaze at the dizzy toy, — with envy, perhaps, if socially ambitious beyond his purse (bother the dolt for living in a slow age — he could have indulged by mortgaging his house and standing off the grocer); or, if of bucolic turn, with an undefined sense that his peaceful and necessary use of the common highway had been wantonly disturbed by a display beyond his attainment, interest, and appreciation. But had he only known what was coming upon him and his kind within a few short years!

We certainly have progressed — if the utterly changed relation of the people to their highways may be called progress. What is a highway ? A public thoroughfare, divided for convenience into parallel spaces for vehicles and pedestrians, except that, at every crossing, vehicle and pedestrian come upon common ground. And there’s the rub. Are the fortunate few in high-speed steel locomotives fit companions to share this common ground with the rest of humanity afoot ?

The automobile principle — the substitution of machine power for horsepower upon the highways — stands for a distinct advance in transportation methods. But the development of this principle has been abnormal. Instead of producing a machine which shall lighten the burdens of both man and horse and serve the bulk of mankind, without seriously disturbing the rights of any, ninetyseven per cent of automobile effort has been upon an expensive speed-wagon for the well-to-do. There are two essentials in automobiling as now developed: first, a speed comparable with that of trolley and steam-cars, — the ability to cover distances by road never dreamed of with the horse; and second, the right of way upon the common highways, — a luxury which forces upon the real owners of the highway, the public, a serious curtailment of its privileges, with absolutely no compensating feature. The automobile of to-day is not a substitute for the horse; it is a substitute de luxe for the trolley and the steam-cars. The automobilist pays for his speed; his right of way he takes without price from a public that has never been able to give definition to its vague but deep-seated protest. This condition has come upon us gradually, but a given condition is precisely the same in its relation to the human family, whether brought about by slow or sudden process. Our view of a condition is, however, marvelously affected by the rate of change. The human mind is not sensitive to long-distance comparisons; the old picture grows dim as the new one comes on, — and luckily, too, else we would all die of our emotions when contemplating the changes which long years so stealthily bring upon us. This argues that, by the gentleness of its approach, the new condition upon the highways may have caught napping some most sacred notions concerning popular rights, — possibly liberties, — for to-day the dear people certainly do their “pursuit of happiness” looking fearfully sidewise. Our poor, unretentive minds can be made to comprehend the great change of the past ten years only by resort to this artifice: eliminate, in imagination, the intervening time, but leave the skeleton of facts to come upon us in a night, — bring ten years ago down to to-day, and awake to-morrow into our own to-day.

So, suppose, to-day, children on their way to school, tossing balls, and racing about oblivious of crossings and curves; their elders walking the highway in city and country, without fear in their hearts, but all yielding cheerfully to their own best friend, the trolley-car, space clearly marked by two steel bands upon a comparatively few highways; “sharp turn in the road ” meaningless to them, “concealed corner ” not yet invented. Then suppose, to-day, the appearance throughout the country of a proclamation something like this: —

“Dear People: This is to announce that we, representing nearly ten per cent of all the people, have at much expense possessed ourselves of road-locomotives of high power and speed, which, beginning to-morrow, we shall run in great numbers upon all the highways, as our private pleasure vehicles. The advent of these swift machines will, obviously, necessitate radical changes in your use of the highways; hence, this friendly note of warning. Use the roadways as little as possible, and then with circumspection. Instruct your children in this new danger that will attend them at every turn; caution them against such earnestness in play as will for a moment put them off their eternal guard. Instill in their young minds an abiding fear of the common highway. And you, elders, approach every street-crossing with your thought upon our road-engines. Look both ways : if the road is clear, proceed, but take no chances. When in doubt, wait on the curb. Many unfortunate accidents are bound to result from your inexperience, but time will, we hope, eventually reduce the casualties to the class known as ‘unavoidable.’ Remember, all of you, that the price of safety is eternal vigilance, — and nothing induces more faithful vigil than a chronic sense of danger.”

Now let the imagination run over into that promised “to-morrow.” Would these machines have started ? Of course not. Rut they are all running to-day. And is there one admonition in this proclamation to which the non-automobiling public has not, by slow degrees, bent its patient neck ?

That automobilists are killed in automobile accidents argues little against the sport. Participants in any sport expect casualties. Yachtsmen are sometimes drowmed; men and women on the links have been struck down by golf-balls; indeed, people have tripped over croquet wickets and broken their necks; and it is recorded that one old lady, in the excitement of bridge whist, swallowed her dainty scoring pencil with fatal result. Please observe, however, that all these people die at their own games. The general public is non-participant; its attitude toward their misfortunes is one of indifferent pity. But if yachtsmen habitually ran down fishing-smacks, or lightships, or coal barges, the public would rise up against yachting. A golf-ball might stray from the links and kill a meditative passer-by once, but not twice, without provoking a stern demand for a re-laying of that particular golf course. Yet so insidiously has the sport of automobiling crept in upon the public consciousness that the frequent killing of non-participants serves only to spur the surviving non-participants to greater degrees of caution. Even in the realm of commerce a dangerous business is sternly compelled to limit its casualties to participants. A powder mill may blow up with all its employees, get a paragraph in the papers, and rebuild; but if some of its fragments do damage in a neighboring village, there’s a great hue and cry, and that powder mill must rebuild farther away. Such is the public temper as to the rights of non-participants, toward every sport and business except the sport of automobiling. The introduction into public parks of an expensive sport for the few, dangerous to all, would be instantly suppressed by law and public sentiment, — while the common highway is freely used for an exclusive sport which, in its present uncontrolled state, will continue to furnish its list of “ unavoidable ” casualties so long as men and women are prone to forget, and children are possessed of immature judgment.

But even these “ unavoidable ” accidents are incidental. The sense of insecurity which they create, the apprehensive craning of necks up and down the highway, the new vigil that has become a part of daily life, — these constitute the main burden that the automobile has put upon every man, woman, and child who use the streets. The quiet delights of the country road, with horse or wheel, have been killed by the fiends who “ open her up wide in the country, — nobody there, you know.” The absurdity of it is that the non-participating public has meekly set itself to the study of ways and means to avoid being killed, instead of branding the sport as an impossibility in the light of all precedent. It is natural that all should use ordinary precaution to avoid collision with the traffic which serves all, — horses, trolleys, fire-engines, and even engine-propelled vehicles in the general service; but one will search in vain for a reason why ninety per cent of the people should be put upon their everlasting guard against a luxurious pastime in which they cannot participate.

How has this anomalous condition come about ? Luckily for automobilists, the trolley preceded them upon the highway; and so gradual was the advent of automobiles that the unthinking public failed to distinguish the difference between making due allowance for its own necessary carriers upon a few principal roads, and dodging the unnecessary carriers of the few upon every road in the land. Then, too, the automobile first came in vogue in Europe, where everyday people are trained to regard the overriding pleasures of their betters with more or less fortitude. Its acceptance there unquestionably gave it entrée here subject to less careful scrutiny than it otherwise would have had to meet. In these two respects the preparation of the public mind has been on psychological rather than on logical lines.

In this manner automobiling has developed, with speed as its prime requisite, and speed as its most objectionable feature. What is the public going to do about it? Let custom slowly dissolve the memory of a once pleasanter relation with the highways? But mere custom should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental principle that the few shall not infringe upon the rights of the many. It is now the public’s duty to revert to first principles, and adjust automobiling to the miscellaneous traffic upon the roadways, regardless of the unwarranted privileges which custom has seemingly granted.

Express trains run sixty miles an hour, on tracks from which other forms of traffic are rigidly excluded; experience has determined that twenty-five miles is the limit of safety for trolley cars, upon their well-defined portion of the highway.

Based on these premises, fifteen miles an hour is not an unreasonably low maximum speed for any vehicle, public or private, which runs an unmarked course upon the roadway itself; a generous public might allow eighteen miles. In cities and towns, ten miles an hour is an equally liberal speed limit.

One can almost hear the wail of the automobilists that these limits are much below the requirements of safety. They are, as safety upon the highway is now reckoned. The present factors of safety are agility, eternal vigilance, and good judgment; the automobile accidents due to youth, old age, and sudden confusion, are mourned as “ unavoidable.” But the public cannot recover its pleasurable use of the highways, and its peace of mind, until these “ unavoidable ” accidents cease to occur; and the speed limits at which these will cease to occur are far below the speed limits required by the present loose notions of “ safety.” “ But, in the country,” they cry, “ in the country the roads are used hardly at all! ” Quite true. The impending prospect of a machine coming at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, though it comes but once a day, will keep a winding country road clear of all whom necessity does not compel to travel upon it. The country places, both here and abroad, have suffered from the speeding automobile vastly more than the cities. Cowper wrote, “ God made the country, and man made the town,” in ignorance of the automobile’s most unpleasant habit.

How shall these limits be enforced ? Ordinances are unavailing; police-traps serve to check automobile speeds over the traps, and increase speeds outside the traps. Laws, moral suasion, threats, and penalties, are all wasted attempts to regulate the average automobilist. Now, why not try a mechanically sure way, — regulate his machine by an automatic attachment, sealed and beyond his control ? Such a device should have two functions, to cover the requirements of country and city, respectively: — First, arrange that at a speed of eighteen miles an hour it shall automatically shut off the source of power; this would effectively enforce the maximum speed limit.

Second, arrange that at a speed of ten miles — or at any other rate of speed determined upon by town or city authorities— it shall automatically display colored signals on both sides of the car, in full view of passers-by; and make the display of these signals a misdemeanor within the prescribed districts. This device would bring the offending automobilists as fully under the public eye as are any other disturbers of the peace on the streets, and render them as easily subject to complaint and conviction.

Under this rigid control, what would happen to automobiling? Those individuals who must get over the country at high speed would be relegated to the guarded routes of travel from which they should never have been allowed to escape, — and the pleasure of those who wish to tour in orderly fashion would be correspondingly enhanced; cars of rational power and cost would multiply, and be run by rational people; automobiling would be killed as a frenzied sport, and rejuvenated as a healthful pastime. More than all this, every one using the roadways would know for a certainty that nowhere could an automobile bear down upon him at more than twice the speed of a brisk horse-trot; and if on the city streets he were to submit to the impositions of automatically proclaimed law-breakers, the fault would be all his own.

Drastic measures, you say ? Not at all. In naming conditions the public is not asking a favor, — it is granting a concession to a comparatively few individuals. These individuals could not have made as good a bargain with the public ten years ago, had the possibilities of the automobile been foreseen; and it would be absurd to claim that the public’s rights in the highway have been diminished by its tardiness in asserting them.