AUTO-TOURING WAYS AND MEANS 
HOW TO CONFRONT DIFFICULT HIGHWAY CONDITIONS AND 
THE JEOPARDIES ARISING ALONG THE WAY —Second Paper 
A MAN grows pretty confident 
driving around in his own home 
country. Growing used to the 
local conditions, whether in a 
city with busy corners or in a back 
region with mean going, he learns how 
to go against all the difficult conditions. 
The tourist sees a highway once and 
cannot possibly know definitely what 
lies around the next bend. For that 
reason New York state with its devel¬ 
oped roads may baffle the visitor from 
the untouched alkali chucksand as for 
the New Yorker, off nis own concrete, 
asphalt or oiled roads he has some most 
amazing enlightening coming to his 
ignorance. 
The Department of Agriculture some¬ 
time since examined a piece of concrete 
highway down in Maryland. They took 
a stretch some miles long, visible 
throughout its length to any driver and 
kept tabs on it. There they found more 
accidents per mile, per week, than on 
the rough-and-tumble highways. It fol¬ 
lows, therefore, that roads ought not to 
be improved. 
I am a country, small-town driver. 
My feelings in a city thoroughfare are 
miserable beyond words. My normal 
country good-road gait is rather less than 
25 miles per hour, but when my speed¬ 
ometer had been out of whack for a 
year and I had it repaired, I discovered 
that I was plowing along at 30 miles or 
more without realizing it. This in Cen¬ 
tral New York. These details are cited 
because in what I say the bias should 
be mentioned. The fact is, no two driv¬ 
ers are alike in their view-points. One 
of my best friends says: “Spears goes 
where a goat wouldn’t think of going”: 
nevertheless, this man’s driving when I 
ride with him gives me fits at times, 
although he handles a car beautifully 
and never has an accident. 
The jeopardy of a fine, concrete high¬ 
way is the combination of speed and in¬ 
accurate handling of the wheel. One of 
the worst scares I ever had was when 
I struck a wet clay coating where hay- 
wagons had swung out of a field onto a 
fine concrete highway. My car swung 
four ways at once and but for the tires 
taking hold again, I would have been 
ditched and probably smashed up. 
Freshly oiled roads, even when stone 
dust or sand has been spread on them 
as in New York (a practice worthy of 
being followed in other states), may 
throw a car completely or partly out of 
a driver’s control. I have seen five cars 
ditched in a hundred yards by fresh oil. 
Even when well sanded such a road 
means spattered chassis and underparts. 
When I arrived in California I ran a 
screw-driver along the bottom of my 
motor-pan by chance. Oil and dust and 
Page 176 
By RAYMOND S. SPEARS 
mud coated the metal to a depth of 
nearly an inch and more than 100 pounds 
of this accumulation was scraped off— 
a burden I didn’t know was there! 
Speed is the jeopardy of the best 
highways. The man who has been ac- 
.. 
There are few men who have made so 
many journeys along the highways of 
our country as Mr. Spears. He has 
been on the road for twenty years and 
knows the subject of auto-touring from 
a practical standpoint as well as from 
an ethical one, and his conclusions are 
invaluable to all who contemplate a 
motor-camping trip. 
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim 
customed to ten miles an hour over 
rough highways, when he hits fine maca¬ 
dam or concrete feels inspired to “hit it 
up.” For several years in western New 
York drivers from beyond the Missis¬ 
sippi met with disaster because they took 
advantage of the “good roads” and tried 
out the speed of their cars. They sim- 
Courtesy Wenzel Auto-Tent Co. 
Ready for the night 
ply didn’t know the technic of fast driv¬ 
ing on good roads, though many of them 
could go through conditions that would 
have stalled people accustomed to mak¬ 
ing forty or fifty miles an hour. 
N EXT to the slick places on concrete 
and other stone road surfaces, the 
most treacherous highway is the gravel 
road, freshly laid. The gravel is several 
inches thick. It is loose. It is rutted. 
The stranger feels the highway as a firm 
bed and in a mile or two begins to creep 
up in speed. Suddenly, without warning, 
in spite of every effort, the car takes to 
the ditch, and perhaps breaks off a tele¬ 
phone pole, rolls over or blows up— 
doing some deadly dangerous thing. 
The gravel is practically like roller bear¬ 
ings under an automobile tire, and at a 
certain moment for every kind of tire, 
it goes into action. The worst highway 
I ever struck was one on which gravel 
had been laid in clay and was wet from 
a shower. Here, in the night, the native 
drivers stopped and let the other fellow 
go by, even when both had chains. This 
was in southwestern Arkansas. 
Every highway has its own special 
jeopardy, or jeopardies. Before the 
days of prohibition we had drunken 
drivers on good roads with high speed 
cars. This jeopardy was probably the 
worst that ever confronted any decent 
and careful driver. One could not 
escape it except by good fortune. Then 
there are careless drivers, stubborn 
drivers and roadhog drivers. The tour¬ 
ist will find, as he goes from state to 
state, that each state has a special type 
of driver. Thus in Utah one will find 
probably the kindliest and most polite 
drivers there are. In states where 
people afflicted with lung troubles find 
haven, victims of these diseases will 
crowd everybody including one another. 
There is a peculiar type of driver in 
California, the Merry-hellers they are 
called, who are far from home and who 
“just cut loose.” People out for a good 
time are much more apt to be reckless, 
even when sober, than those who are 
out on business or who, as most tourists, 
seek far places for enjoyment but not 
deviltry. Also it is advisable as a mat¬ 
ter of safety, to give women drivers all 
the road available, for .women frequently 
expect this much at least and need it, 
apparently, as they generally lack 
strength or initative, the one for the 
quick turn at the last minute, affected 
hv some professional drivers, and the 
other to make a start to turn out in 
time. I believe California statistics 
showed for a period that while 20% 
of the drivers were women, they had 
something like 60% of the accidents. 
A tourist in strange regions had better 
act on the assumption that local drivers, 
men and women, are going to take all 
there is, especially in regions where the 
illiteracy rate is bigh. 
Mud is not just mud; it differs con¬ 
siderably. There are kinds of mud 
which do not demand chains, even. 
These are in sandy loams. But in Kan¬ 
sas, for instance, there are muds which 
if one does not put on chains will daub 
the wheels and stick in the fenders so 
tightly as to stop a car by choking up. 
