COUNTRY LIFE
" A Shaming Record "
The countryside, I think, can supply a comment or two on " the shaming record " of the appalling road-accident figures for December. One of those comments concerns that most persistent road offender, the country workman on the bicycle. Knocking off in winter just before twilight, he can invariably be found, in the deadliest period just before darkness, trying to make home without any kind of light on his machine at all. Later, in darkness, the cyclist on remote country roads has another lamp-saving trick—that of riding without a light so long as the road is empty and of switching on suddenly at the approach of a car. Both practices are highly dangerous, both can have the most Unnerving effect on the motorist, and both are everyday occurrences in the country. But country roads are now filled with an entirely new class of motorist : the Army driver. Using fast vehicles, independent of petrol rationing, travelling mostly in strange country, the average Army driver sets a new low standard of driving. Every day one sees examples of Army driving on narrow and dangerous country roads that make the civilian driver despair. Is it possible that Army standards of road responsibility are not high enough? In a recent case a soldier allowed his lorry to be driven, in the black-out, by a civilian ; the civilian promptly knocked down a lamp-post, four people, and killed a child. The soldier was " severely reprimanded."
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