{"id":6051,"date":"2022-08-31T10:28:08","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T09:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scrapcarnetwork.org\/news\/?p=6051"},"modified":"2025-02-26T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T18:19:51","slug":"have-mercy-on-children-and-other-early-motoring-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrapcarnetwork.org\/news\/have-mercy-on-children-and-other-early-motoring-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Have mercy on children (and other early motoring advice)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cars are such a huge feature of modern life now that it can be difficult to imagine a world without them. But all the way back in the 1900s, they weren\u2019t the ubiquitous modes of personal transport now. They were treated like (and comparable to) steam trains, and ones that could plough through your neighbourhood with little warning. They were big, scary, unsafe, and very, very new.<\/p>\n

That meant there was a lot of pressure on early drivers to properly control them, and a lot of advice available to help them to do so – all handily collated and available for reading in the Etiquette of Motoring. This advice varies from the strange to the sensible, but you might be surprised at how much of it is actually still applicable to modern driving. Here, we\u2019ve collected some of the best bits of it – so if you ever come to scrap your car<\/a><\/strong>, it\u2019s perhaps worth bearing some of it in mind!<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t drive on the wrong side of the road\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a genius to work out this one. First of all, it\u2019s highly dangerous. Far more importantly, though – it\u2019s downright impolite. Almost as soon as you open the book, the Etiquette of Motoring is quick to remind you that \u201cto drive on one\u2019s own side of the highway is the first principle of etiquette on the road\u201d. To be fair, it\u2019s really hard to argue with that. Back then, cars weren\u2019t capable of achieving nearly the speeds they are today, so oncoming people and animals would have had a lot more time to react. But you can bet there would have been some extremely vigorous tutting.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearn to steer\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once more, it\u2019s a perfectly solid piece of driving advice which has stood the test of time. If you\u2019re planning on taking your motor car out onto the cobbled streets, you will indeed need to be capable of steering it. Those who were just embarking on your driving career, would ideally have a more experienced driver controlling the clutch pedal, which goes to show that the idea of dual-control cars if far older than perhaps many of us first thought. The Etiquette of Motoring suggests finding a suitable empty road to practise on – or failing that, a few loops around one\u2019s own courtyard would suit nicely. (Back then if you didn\u2019t have at least one manservant, you had no business owning a car in the first place.)<\/p>\n

New drivers were also warned that the attention and concentration required will \u201cpossibly prove exhausting\u201d. This sounds a little silly before you consider that this was well before power steering existed, so the effort involved would indeed be pretty physically tiring. It was also well before modern road infrastructure was in place, so you wouldn\u2019t have all the lights, signs and signals that modern drivers rely on for split-second warnings and vital early indications. They save us more mental energy than we probably give them credit for!<\/p>\n

\u201cTake corners at walking pace\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

OK, so the early 1900s weren\u2019t exactly Tokyo Drift, but taking corners too quickly has always been an easy way to lose control of your vehicle, so the advice is still sound in principle. Plus, partially due to the lack of power steering we touched on above, older cars weren\u2019t what you\u2019d call responsive, so taking corners at walking pace would be the best way to maintain total control over vehicles which didn\u2019t always have the manoeuvrability to match their speed.<\/p>\n

Of course, regularly practicing your steering would help, and the book helpfully mentions that enterprising gentlemen can give themselves a decent head start if they are \u201caccustomed to handling yachts and small boats\u201d – which should tell you something about the turning circles of these things. You could also practice honing your reflexes on your bike, as \u201cthe speed of a bicycle is commonly in excess of ordinary road vehicles\u201d. Those in today\u2019s inner-city commuter belts might well say – \u2019twas ever thus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not advisable\u2026 to have a speed recorder\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is one bit of advice we definitely can\u2019t get behind in quite the same way, and feels especially difficult to reconcile with an age where AI-controlled speed limiters have recently become mandatory<\/a><\/strong>. But in the words of one historical contributor: \u2018it is doubtful whether they give much pleasure to the average owner of a car\u2019. Safety-critical or not, you can\u2019t really argue with that.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also described in the Etiquette of Motoring as \u2018very costly, and of doubtful utility\u2019. We\u2019re not sure about costly, but they definitely have utility for anything capable of travelling over 15mph, as modern cars do. Presumably in the olden days, if you needed to know what speed you were travelling you\u2019d just ask your manservant to estimate as he cycled alongside you.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, what historical contemporaries did actually recommend is something a little left of field – it\u2019s a gradometer. These devices were used to measure the hill gradients over which your car was travelling, which doesn\u2019t sound all that useful until you consider this was an age where most cars were easily defeated by particularly steep inclines.<\/p>\n

Have mercy on timid women, dogs and children<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Really, you need to read the original text in order to appreciate this advice in its full glory; \u201cYou will have no idea of the horrors of apprehension suffered by many a woman alone in a pony trap who sees your approach and does not know whether you mean to stop or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

It then proceeds to warn aspiring drivers to go very quietly past this hypothetical woman, in case she should take fright. Now, while this is obviously wrapped up in some extremely, ah, period-appropriate modes of thinking, once you dig past the problematic surface layer you\u2019ll find that there is actually some solid advice buried in there.<\/p>\n

Essentially, it\u2019s reminding you that you don\u2019t necessarily always know what anyone else is thinking, or what their intentions are – or for that matter, what they think about yours. In other words, it\u2019s about the importance of communication, and clearly signalling your intentions to other road users. Modern indicators and hazard lights give us more ways to do this than ever, proving that this is a piece of advice which has stood the test of well over a century of motoring advances (even if the author does tend to refer to women as if they\u2019re a flighty herd of wildebeest).<\/p>\n

It also cautions that children and dogs similarly have a right to life, even if the latter is \u2018a senseless, ill-conditioned barking cur\u2019. Which we think is a very polite way of basically saying please don\u2019t steer your car towards random people and animals, even if they\u2019re annoying you.<\/p>\n

So yeah – all told, this book is a bit of a mixed bag. As we\u2019ve highlighted though, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s useless to today\u2019s drivers. You just need to take in all the available information in front of you, dismiss the irrelevant or outdated stuff, and use your best judgement as to what to pay attention to as you move forward. Just as you do when you\u2019re driving!<\/p>\n

And speaking of which – if your car is something else that\u2019s starting to show its age, that\u2019s exactly where we can help here at Scrap Car Network. We make it simple and easy to scrap your car, and get maximum cash in the process. Just enter your reg and postcode into the fields on our site and we\u2019ll get you an instant quote before you can say\u00a0scrap my car<\/a><\/strong>. Curious to find out how much yours is worth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cars are such a huge feature of modern life now that it can be difficult to imagine a world without them. But all the way back in the 1900s, they weren\u2019t the ubiquitous modes of personal transport now. They were treated like (and comparable to) steam trains, and ones that could plough through your neighbourhood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":6151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n