The Best Driver in the World
Learn to drive, take the test, then tune your road craft - 1950s style
Driving is something on DriveTribe that brings us all together, an energy, a field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us together. You too understand and harbour ambitions of being - 'The Best Driver in the World'. Where once you where the young padawan, now, full driving licence in hand, you are the Master.
The early 60s, and a 1940s Morris 8 in the foreground and, mid construction, the first of two nuclear power plants built on the Dungeness headland on the Kent coast.
Ray Norcliffe now takes the reigns - A nostalgic journey - From the provisional to the full driving licence and the steps beyond. The town, Rotherham, UK, and though the cars may be old the principles remain true.
The Licence and Responsibilities
Here’s a thought. No matter what car it is you own, how big, small, powerful, manual, automatic, old, new, Honda, Mercedes, Renault, Volvo, or Bugatti Veyron you have to have a licence to drive it. And, sometime between your 17th birthday and now, you’ll have taken a test to convince a Driving Examiner that you’d reached a standard of aptitude, knowledge and responsibility whereby you could be allowed to apply for and hold a proper Driving Licence.
In other words, you’d have reached the stage where society deemed that it could take the risk of you being let loose on your own in charge of a motor vehicle on any public road or motorway. The Driving Examiner is trusted to act as judge and jury on behalf of the rest of us i.e. Society, with authority in the matter of the ‘Yes or No’ driving licence decision.
www.gov.uk
Generally at this stage with a proper licence, from the very moment of your first solo drive and for a period beyond, everyone who knows and cares about you, including the examiner who took the decision to let you do it, will have their fingers crossed that you don’t ‘cock it up’. And make no mistake about it, statistics reveal that many holders of a brand new licence, particularly the young, do just that – cock it up.
Overall, and according to the Department for Transport’s 2018 annual report on ‘reported road casualties’ in Great Britain, there were 1,784 fatalities, 25,511 serious injuries and 160,597 casualties of all severities.
www.gov.uk
Rays of comfort amongst those figures are the further comments in the report that casualties of all severities are 6% lower than the previous year, and that the rate of fatalities per billion vehicle miles has fallen by 1% from 5.43 in 2017 to 5.38 in 2018.
www.gov.uk
However, and quite separately, one insurance company survey conducted in 2017 revealed the following about drivers who are new to the job, predominantly young and inexperienced:
· Drivers aged 17 to 19 years represent just 1.5% of all currently issued licences to drive, but are involved in 9% of all fatal road traffic accidents, and
· 21.6% of that age group are involved in an accident in their first year of driving.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The seriousness of the young driver statistics are all too often underlined, sadly brought home to us, by graphic images of road traffic accidents on television news screens, many in vehicles with multiple occupants. The causes behind the statistics for young drivers, again by that 2017 insurance company survey were, amongst others, identified as:
: Risk Taking
: Overconfidence
: Inexperience
And the ‘judge and jury’ Driving Examiner is by no means profligate in handing out new licences. The average pass rate for car drivers is around 43% out of some 1.6 million tests taken annually.
The majority of new drivers need up to four or five attempts to be one of the 43% who pass. From those statistics, the judge and jury examiners appear to be doing their best to minimise the risk to the rest of us as they sanction new licence holders. Even so, and tragically, it does go wrong.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
However, having been given permission to drive, any new driver has much to learn with much responsibility to take care in their forthcoming days, weeks, months and years out there on the road as they build up a sense of road craft – or not. But without doubt it’s never easy and ever harder to make the transition from inexperience to confident maturity in today’s motoring culture. Ultimately though, new drivers will reach a point where they’ll say to themselves, rightly or wrongly and with self belief thrown in, that they’re the best driver in the world.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
So what happens in the path from that first turn of the ignition key, or turn of the crank handle in my case, to the point of being ‘simply the best’? I’ll get to some of the ingredients that have influenced my own approach to driving later, offering them up for critique and acknowledging that we’re all different and one size doesn’t fit all. For the moment though, and with tongue in cheek, I’ll segue into the past with a story on ‘How I Became the Best Driver in the World’ during a time when it was easy compared with the challenges faced by new drivers of today.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The Year - 1958
17th birthday and I was able to apply for a Provisional Licence to drive a motor vehicle. I didn’t hesitate, the form had already been filled out earlier in anticipation and, by the end of week following the birthday, I had a Provisional Driving Licence in my hands allowing me to learn to drive a motor car.
I didn’t hesitate since my Dad had a car, and he’d let me drive it, wouldn’t he? And he’d teach me to drive it, wouldn’t he? Still at school, other Fathers had done just that with the result that some of my young peers, whose 17th birthdays had been much earlier than mine, had already started to learn to drive. And my Dad didn’t let me down. He began teaching me to drive as soon as the Provisional Licence landed through the letterbox.
The South Yorkshire town of Rotherham in the late 50s.
The Provisional
The License was provisional in the sense that there were conditions set out by law that had to be complied with before I was permitted to get behind the steering wheel of a car, start the engine, and drive away.
For a start, the car that I intended to drive had to have signs attached, front and rear, in the form of a red letter L on a white background – a pair of ‘L plates’.
1939-48 - Morris 8 Series E - 0-50mph: 32secs and a top speed of nearly 64mph. The engine a mere 918cc - I was the responsible one holding a full licence, my friend the learner.
The L plates also had to be of a prescribed size, just like the number plates on a motor car. Any old size of L plate just wouldn’t do. Still the same these days.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The purpose of the L plates was to provide warning to other road users, and pedestrians for that matter, that the person behind the wheel, driving the car on which they were attached, was inexperienced in the control of a motor vehicle. How inexperienced was for other road users to determine for themselves by watching me carefully whenever they were in my vicinity as I drove along. For it could have been the very first time that I’d been behind the wheel, or I could have reached the stage of a confident competency to handle both the vehicle and to respond to the road conditions and the behaviour of other road users. They weren’t to know. But they would have had a good idea by carefully observing my driving, from ‘slow and unsure’ at first to ‘pretty well got it covered’ at the end. They’d still give me plenty of room though as their insurance policy against anything that might and could go wrong.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The next condition attached to the licence was that I was not permitted to drive alone. In order to practice driving, so that I might reach the level of a confident competency, someone had to sit beside me in the passenger seat. Not only that, the person sat beside me had to be in possession of a Full Driving Licence with authority to drive the type of vehicle we were both sat in. I guess then that there was yet a third condition, an obligation on my part to give it my all and learn to drive and not let down the experienced passenger who was my tutor.
Back then, in 1958, there weren’t many, if any, driving schools and instructors, other than the BSM (British School of Motoring) with its iconic graphic of a map of England, Scotland and Wales holding a steering wheel and a gear lever as it drove along.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
Anyway, Dad’s car, registration EVM 86, was an old two door, black, 1938 Ford 7Y, with a four cylinder side valve engine that originally delivered 23.4 brake horse power. It had three forward gears. The engine was knackered, showing signs of ‘piston slap’, with cylinder bores worn too big for their pistons and the pistons worn too small for the bores they were sat in. The net result was the noise of pistons ‘slapping' about as they went up and down the cylinder bores.
Photo courtesy of wikimedia.org - The Ford 7Y, otherwise known as the Ford 8, was the predecessor to the Anglia. Nearly 66,000 where produced between 1938 and 1939.
The three speed gearbox was also knackered. Drive it hard up a hill and it would jump out of gear and have to be forced back in. The driver’s door too was problematic. It had been opened and shut so many times in its 20 year life that the hinges were worn out. The door, when opened, dropped almost half an inch, or so it seemed. There was a knack to closing the door, like ‘lift and pull’, something similar to the weightlifters skill of ‘clean and jerk’. Dad had the knack to deal with the knackered door, being able to lift and pull it shut in one go. For me, at least three attempts were needed.
We had the engine of EVM 86 sorted with a hefty garage bill. I can’t remember the gearbox and the door being fixed but, not long after I’d started learning to drive in the black Ford with my Dad teaching me, it was part exchanged for a stylish 1948 Hillman Minx, registration DET 978.
1948 Mark II Hillman Minx - More powerful than the Ford reaching 50mph in just under 25secs, the 7Y could only manage 35secs.
Now DET 978, the Hillman Minx, was something different. It cost Dad £250 from a garage in Chesterfield. It had four doors instead of just two; a bigger side valve engine; and four forward gears. Not only that, the gear change was mounted on the steering column, American style, with more linkages between the gear lever and its gearbox than you’d find on the Menai Straits suspension bridge. But it worked a treat and felt ultra modern after the poker like gear lever of EVM. Yet another feature of DET 978 was its colour - it had one. Unlike most cars of the day, which were black, DET 978 was a lovely grey with curvy bonnet and mudguard lines, like an American car but smaller.
Courtesy of Veikl.com - 1948 brochure - of note was the optional 'His Masters Voice Automobile Radio', accredited dealer fit only.
After the Ford, the bigger Hillman was luxurious and a delight to learn to drive in. I think it delivered a hefty 35 brake horse power. So, there we were, my Dad and I with a decent car to drive around in as I learned and, eventually after I’d learned to drive, take my mates all over the place. I was the only one who could drive and none of their fathers had a car to borrow.
From Rotherham to Lands End, Cornwall, over 350miles and the Minx never missed a beat - Safe to say I had a soft spot for the Minx.
Before that however, I’d made a judgement at 17 and with an ambition to drive a car, that in order to be a proper driver I’d need to know how they worked. You couldn’t be a proper driver without that knowledge could you?
The 'knowledge' courtesy of Odhams Press
So, as a birthday present, my Granddad Smith bought me a book published by Odhams Press, one of the big publishing firms of the time. The book was called ‘Odhams Motor Manual – How Your Car Works And How To Service It’. I read the manual from cover to cover, absorbing everything the author intended me to know.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
I learned about Ackermann angles, camber angles, castor angles, toe ins and toe outs, leading and trailing brake shoes, carburettors, fuel pumps, shock absorbers, in fact the complete works concerning cars of that day.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
Not only that, the OMM had a section on learning to drive so I was well set with that book. I couldn’t have needed anything more to get me on my way to being the best driver in the world.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
I’ve kept the OMM, and it’s as informative today as it was in 1958 when I got it. It's written in a long lost style.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The learning with Dad went well at times and not so well at other times. I made mistakes. There was the time we came across road works on the way to Handsworth in Sheffield paying a visit to one of Dad’s Brothers. New asphalt was being laid by big road surfacing machines and there were tram tracks in the middle of the road as well. I got confused and headed straight for the pile of asphalt instead of going round it but, in mitigation, there was also a tram in the way on the tram tracks. Dad grabbed the wheel and I hit the brakes – eventually. Progress wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
The change in my learning fortunes came when my Brother Alec stepped up to the plate - the L plate I suppose. He’d been taught to drive professionally by the Post Office. Alec had become a postman, eventually gaining promotion to Postman Driver, delivering mail to the outlying districts of Rotherham from the depot where he was based. He knew how to drive and, what’s more, knew how to teach having being taught well himself. Under his direction, and much to Dad’s relief I think, I drove the Hillman and Alec’s Ford van.
Photo courtesy of e83w.co.uk - Original press photo of the Ford Thames Van - E83W Model - Production ran from 1938 to 1957.
Alec’s van was a different driving challenge since it had the accelerator pedal in the middle, between the brake on the right and the clutch on the left. Unlike the Hillman, the van bounced around and was noisy, but I got to grips with it alright. We never got cross with one another. He had a lot of patience with me and I listened patiently to him. I think I even got to drive his Austin Ruby in that learning phase.
My brother Alec with his beloved Austin Seven Ruby - the car was only capable of 50mph, but it was frugal returning 45miles for each gallon of petrol.
The Test
By late April in 1958 Alec thought I was ready to apply for my driving test. So I applied. And a few weeks later I was given an appointment to take my test in Rotherham, on the 24th June, at 9:15.
I’d driven around the area where tests were carried out under Alec’s direction and felt comfortable with what might face me. I hadn’t taken any formal driving lessons with a driving school, but was sure with a Post Office style teaching I didn’t need any. In fact, as I’ve already mentioned, there weren’t many driving schools about in those days.
The test, taken in Dad’s Hillman Minx, was an exercise in concentration, listening to what the examiner wanted me to do and then doing it, whilst watching the traffic and the road and being ready for clip board hitting the dash board to signal an emergency stop.
Unlike today, there weren’t lots of cars on the road, so some of the streets we drove round on the test were more or less empty.
One particular part of the examiners route was designed to test the driver’s knowledge of how to deal with cross road junctions. There were three of them along one of the back streets in town that the examiner had chosen for me to drive on, one after the other with no particular ‘right of way’ at any one of them. I slowed down, looked right and left at the first and then the second, only thinking and realising at the last junction that the examiner might have wanted me to stop before looking right and left and before proceeding to cross. So I did stop at the third junction, looked right and left as I’d done for the first two, and then carried on with the road being clear.
At the end of the test, parked up and filling in forms, the examiner identified that I’d not done what I should have done when crossing the three junctions in the town back street. However, he said that because I’d done it correctly on the last one, then I did know how it should be done and, therefore, he felt able to give me a pass certificate. I got out of the car, and proceeded to untie the L plates as Alec walked towards me. He’d brought me to the test that morning. So there I was, on Tuesday the 24th June 1958, with all of the bits of paper needed to send off for a Full Driving Licence. And so I did.
The Open Road
Odhams New Road Atlas of Great Britain - The late 1950's saw the beginnings of the UKs motorway network - The Preston bypass in Lancashire, now part of the M6, was opened in 1958
I knew that having passed my driving test that the real learning to drive was only just beginning. I could handle the car, it’s gears, park it up, reverse round corners and so on, and I knew the physical laws of friction which placed limits on cornering and braking. Acceleration didn’t come into it, cars weren’t built for such thrills back then. I also had a good knowledge of Highway Code road craft. I knew how the car worked and could interpret whether it was alright or not from its noises and feel in my hands. It would ‘speak to me’ in that way, and I’d learned to listen to it, being able to recognise and diagnose any unusual noise or feel. I’d separate out where the ‘unusual’ was coming from, like only under acceleration, or braking, or coasting along in neutral, or going round a corner, or with the car stationary and just the engine running. The Odhams Motor Manual saw to it that I was well briefed in how to make such interpretations.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
But what I didn’t have, couldn’t have at that time, was a fund of knowledge of the psychology of other road users, their behaviour on the road which would affect me, that I’d have to deal with and react to as I drove about. Gaining that knowledge could only come about from experience, patiently put together as the days and weeks and years went by. I still do it.
Unlike L plates, still the same now as then, the psychology of other road users has changed since the time I learned to drive. And it’s a much bigger aspect of driving than it ever was. It’s more difficult with cars having changed from being ‘pets’ to behaving as ‘animals’. Drivers have changed from being ‘neighbours of the road’ to being ‘adversaries on a track’. Cars are now built to compete and not just to transport people as they were back in the 1950s. However, assembling an encyclopaedic knowledge of driving psychology throughout a lifelong experience of driving was and still is part of the fun of driving. Without it, it’s not possible to develop a necessary sense of anticipation which, if you like, is the very important ‘sixth sense’ of driving ability.
The End Game of Driving
The best piece of advice that I ever received about driving came from my Brother Alec in the days when he instructed me as a learner driver. And it’s stuck with me ever since, as a first principle of driving. I’m guessing here but I reckon the advice was given to him by those who taught him to be a postman driver in Rotherham. It makes sense that, with a fleet of vans central to the business, the last thing the Post Office would have wanted was poor driving standards, a bad accident record, and repair bills that came off the bottom line of profit for the business, even though in those days it was a publically owned undertaking.
And the advice - The ‘art’ of unobtrusive driving.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
Unobtrusive? Being inconspicuous to other road users. The idea was that your actions as a driver should have as minimal an effect on other drivers on the road as possible, i.e. not cause them a problem as they went about their business. I could give plenty of examples to illustrate the point, but work it out for yourselves by counting the number of times another driver has caused a problem for you and other motorists through a lack of awareness or thought, by being obtrusive.
Odhams Motor Manual, 1957
Alright, here’s an example, real life and a location and situation in mind. Busy road, traffic congested and queuing with a tail back to an earlier roundabout which gets ‘clogged up’ (possibly by an obtrusive driver) stalling the cross traffic. Vehicles start to move slowly, but one of the drivers decides it’s not worth moving just a couple or three car lengths at a time. So the driver stays put, happy to allow a gap to develop with cars in front as they move forward. Oblivious to the log jam behind, the held up traffic doesn’t get an opportunity to move. The roundabout remains ‘clogged’ with no chance to free itself. Just one or two vehicles being able to move could create the breathing space needed. But obtrusive behaviour prevents that from happening until the one driver holding back the queue decides to make a move. There are many more situations where traffic would flow more easily but for obtrusive driving.
If that was the first principle, then the second principle was to acknowledge the potential dangers of driving each time I got behind the steering wheel. I had to accept that even though I thought I was the best driver in the world, that irrational belief wouldn’t protect me from the things that I couldn’t control. Like the time when stationary, queuing in town traffic on the way into Wakefield driving Dad’s 1958 Ford Prefect VWR 329. There was nothing I could do about the Bread Delivery Van that smashed into the back of me, in a hurry to deliver the morning’s bread.
The Ford Prefect 100E, 1953-59 - With a 1172cc 4 cylinder side valve engine, 36bhp and a top speed of 71mph.
Nor could I do anything about the moment of turning right into a side road in Newcastle to park the Hillman Mix. Oncoming traffic was stopped but a car left a gap and beckoned me to make the move across and into the side street. What neither of us saw was the cyclist, head down racing along the inside of the stopped traffic, only to appear from nowhere to meet my front offside wing and career over the bonnet complete with bike. No serious harm done on either occasion but a lesson that there are things that are out of my control.
That then might be a second principle of driving. Never drive with an arrogance, a thought that you have complete control over all events and that your driving skills and ability will make you invincible. Rather, be alert to and aware of anything and everything around you. Expect both the unexpected and the expected, just as queuing to enter the M18 slipway for the A1M north on a wet and windy day. I’d left a sufficient ‘escape gap’ between me and the stationary car in front should the ‘expected’ happen. And the expected did happen, as a car travelling too fast in the aquaplane conditions did just that, slipping and sliding over two lanes of carriageway in an attempt to brake and join the back of the queue. The escape was planned and needed. I’ve little doubt that the drivers who make up the Department of Transport annually reported traffic accident and fatality statistics don't set out on the day of their journeys expecting to be amongst those numbers. But statistically, according to insurance company data, every driver can expect to be involved in 3 accidents over a driving lifetime.
Since the time I learned to drive, the psychology of other road users has changed just as much as the cars that we drive. I guess much is down to the increased volume of traffic of today and the ever stringent traffic laws that threaten and seek to penalise at every turn. It makes it hard for ‘new licence drivers’ who, unlike me, haven’t had the distinct advantage of getting used to changes that have occurred incrementally over many years of driving. Cars are faster. Drivers are seemingly less patient, less tolerant, more in a hurry, less forgiving of mistakes and the different abilities that are out there and which I mentioned earlier. So, taken together with incidents and accidents, it’s all negative. But it’s not. There is plenty to enjoy in driving. So how come?
Well for a start, the modern cars I drive are so much better than the Anglia, the Minx and Prefect ever could have been – except, that in the context of their day they were just as good. No, there is a lot of decent behaviour, and unsolicited camaraderie amongst the fast lanes of our roads and it makes driving a pleasure and a joy. If you’ve ever struck up an almost telepathic understanding with a driver you don’t know and haven’t seen as you make a journey you’ll know what I mean. As a pair, usually, there’s a point, an opportunity, where you’ve helped one another out. And from then on for the length of the route you share, you’ll look out for one another, watch each other’s back during lane changing and overtaking. There’s no competition but a mutual satisfaction from being of assistance to one another.
From the Hillman Minx to the Honda Prelude - another car that made driving such a pleasure.
In effect it comes from the final principle of driving I guess, that we share the roads with one another, and the better fashion in which we do that the more is the pleasure of having that hard fought for driving licence.
Thanks so much for taking this driving trip with me.
Kind regards
Ray
(Mimms, JPS, JAE and all Honda related content will be back soon - until then, drive safe and enjoy the journey - Rich)
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