Gus Wilson nosed his car cautiously around a sharp bend
in the pitch-black road. Suddenly the figure of a man appeared in the
bright glare of the headlights. He was standing in the center of the road
waving his arms excitedly.
"What's this?" whispered Joe Clark
as Gus jammed his foot on the brake, "a hold-up or an accident?"
As the car slid to a stop almost in
front of the man, Gus poked his head through the open driver's window.
"What's the trouble," he called.
"I'm in the ditch a few feet up the
road," came the reply from the darkness.
"Will you give me a hand?"
When Gus had maneuvered his car
safely to the edge of the road he aimed the beam of his flashlight down the
steep embankment that bordered the concrete. There, wedged between two
trees, was the ditched car.
"Gosh," exclaimed Gus. "How'd
you manage to get down there? Somebody force you off the road on that
turn?"
"Yeah, an old skunk," replied the
man sheepishly.
"A skunk," repeated Gus. "I've
heard of skunks driving people out of a house before but never off of a road.
What did you do, try to miss him?"
"Not only tried, but succeeded," the
man groaned. "And here I am, I swerved to one side, but I guess I
misjudged the distance and the next thing I know two trees loomed up in front of
me."
"Can't do much about getting her up
out of there tonight," said Gus regretfully. "My name's Gus Wilson and
this is Joe Clark. We own a garage in the next town. Suppose we give
you a lift in and then come out here first thing in the morning with our
wrecker?"
"Fine idea," agreed the man.
"My name's Townsend. I'm a salesman; use my car for traveling. I'll
put up at a hotel for the night, make some calls in the morning, and drop around
in the afternoon and see about the car."
When Townsend arrived at the Model
Garage the next afternoon, Gus was already at work trying to iron some of the
wrinkles out of the mudguards and hood.
"It's not as bad as it looked," Gus
assured him. "No mechanical trouble and by chopping away some of the bark
on those trees we managed to coax her out without ripping the body apart.
You're lucky you went between those trees instead of into them."
"I can't understand how it all
happened," moaned Townsend. "I couldn't have turned more than a couple of
feet to miss that blamed pole cat and I've always been pretty good at judging
distances on the road."
"Maybe your eyes aren't as good as
you thought they were," suggested Gus as he shoved the service jack under the
car and starting jacking it up.
"Never wore a pair of glasses in my
life," boasted Townsend, "And I've always made out better than the average in
eyeglass tests."
"Ever hear of blind spots?" inquired
Gus between blows with a rubber fender hammer he was using.
Townsend shook his head.
"Well, everybody has them.
It's one spot in each eye where you're actually blind. In most cases
they're small and you don't notice them but sometimes they're large enough to
cause trouble. We had a case here in town not so long ago. Tom
Nevers, one of the best drivers I know, ran over a youngster. He argued
that he never saw the girl and didn't know that he hit her until he felt the
bump. Eyewitnesses claimed that the girl was standing there all the
time waiting for a bus and that Nevers didn't seem to make any attempt to miss
her.
"The whole thing was a puzzle until a
doctor tested Never's eyes. It turned out that Tom had a blind spot that
was large enough to blot out a whole car if it was standing in just the right
place."
"Gosh, if you had a blind spot that
large wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you see a hole in everything you
looked at?"
"Nope, they brought that out at the
hearing. We've all got small blind spots, yet we don't see any holes in
what we look at," replied Gus as he reached for a piece of paper that lay on the
repair bench and fished a pencil out of his overalls pocket.
"Here, I'll show you how that doctor
showed people how to look for their blind spots," he explained as he penciled
two small black dots on the paper about three inches apart. "Take this
paper in your right hand and hold it so that this dot at the left is in front of
your right eye. That's it, only hold it at arm's length with the dots
horizontal. Now, close your left eye and look at that left-hand dot.
You see both dots?"
Townsend indicated that he could.
"O. K. Now move the paper
toward your right eye slowly and keep on staring at that left dot. All of
a sudden, you're going to see that right-hand dot disappear completely.
That'll be your blind spot. Then as you move the paper still closer, it'll
come back into view again."
"Well, I'll be hanged," exclaimed
Townsend as he shifted the paper back and forth.
"With it held just about here, that
right hand spot fades right out of the picture. Will it work with your
left eye?"
"Sure, only instead of staring at
the left hand dot you want to concentrate on the one at the right. Then
the left dot does the disappearing act. By finding out how large the spot
can be and still disappear, you can get a rough idea of how large your blind
spot is."
As Gus continued his work on the
car, Townsend amused himself, testing first one eye and then the other.
"Say," he said finally, "do you
suppose I've got a large blind spot and that's what made me run off of the road
last night?"
"Maybe, replied Gus. "I'm no
eye doctor, but if you can, blot out a large spot with that test, it might pay
to find out."
"And that reminds me," continued
Townsend, interested. "Sometime ago I heard something about tunnel vision.
What's that?"
"Just another eye ailment that can
cause a lot of auto accidents," explained Gus. "People with tunnel vision
might just as well try to drive a car with a pair of blinders on. If your
eyesight is normal, you can see what's going on alongside of you even though
you're looking straight ahead. But if you've got tunnel vision, things on
the side are just a blank. It's like looking at everything through a pipe
or a tunnel."
"Can you do anything with black
spots to check upon that tunnel trouble?" asked Townsend.
"According to the doctor who tested
Never's eyes, one of the simplest ways is to hold your index fingers upright,
back near each ear and then move them forward until you can see them even though
you're staring straight ahead. A normal person will notice them as soon as
they come opposite the eyes, but a person with tunnel vision won't even begin to
see them until they're further out in front. To be a safe automobile
driver you ought to be able to see an area in front of your eyes equal at least
110 degrees even when you're looking ahead.
"But then bum eyesight isn't the
only thing that makes poor drivers," added Gus. "Nervousness and lack of
judgment are close seconds. Have you ever tried to see just how well you
really can judge distance? Here's a trick they used to try on
student flyers that'll give you some idea. Just hold an ordinary pencil
lightly in each hand about a foot from your eyes. Then, starting them
horizontal and about two feet apart, see if you can bring the blunt ends
together quickly the first time you try.
"And there's another little stunt
you can do with ordinary pins to test your nerves. Take about fifty
straight pins and pile them up on a newspaper. Then, with somebody timing
you, see how long it takes to transfer those pins, one at a time, to a tin cup.
If you call yourself a good driver, you shouldn't have to rush to move the whole
fifty in less than a minute and a half."
"Holy smokes," put in Townsend.
"If you had your way, only first class aviators would be driving cars."
"Oh, not as bad as all that,"
corrected Gus with a smile. "But you'll have to admit there are lots of
people driving cars who shouldn't be. And the pity of it is, they drive
too fast for their senses.
"Just the other day I was reading an
article by a college professor. According to him, it takes the average
person about a half a second to see danger and do something about it. Now,
in a car going forty miles an hour, a half second is a long time. It can
cover over thirty feet in that instant. That means, if you're hopping
along a road at forty and suddenly see a car stalled across the road less than
thirty feet ahead of you, you're bound to smash into it before you can even
begin to do anything about it.
"It's speed that causes most bad
accidents," warned Gus. "A harmless bump at twenty can be a smash-up at
forty. There's a heap of power in a ton of metal hurled through the air at
forty miles an hour."
"What's your idea of a good driver
then, a slow poke?" inquired Townsend.
"No, not necessarily. My idea
of a good driver is a man who knows himself and his car and isn't in a hurry to
get no place to do nothing. When you meet a fellow that's courteous and
takes good care of his car, you can bet he's a good driver.
"You can't be a good driver and
pilot a pile of junk. Trouble is, people think so much of the power and
speed of the buggy they're driving and not enough about how quickly it will stop
and how well the headlights light up the road without bothering the other
fellow. Tires, brakes, horn, lights, and rear view mirror are just as
important as the motor."
"Gosh," called Joe Clark as Townsend
maneuvered his car out of the driveway.
"Why the sermon on safety?"
"You're a garage mechanic, not a policeman. You've probably got that guy
so scared he'll have a hard time driving to the next town."
"Well, I'll bet he'll get there
without climbing a couple of trees," returned Gus with a smile. "Being
cautious and just a trifle scared never caused any fatal accidents. A
swell-headed driver is one nut in a car that you can't fix with a wrench.
END
