Perry’s Pike is so bad people will not use it; a road alongside the fence has been made by travel, and in dry weather this road is good, barring the pipes which cross it from oil-wells, and the many stone culverts, at each of which it is necessary to swing up on to the pike.  The turns from the side road on to the pike at these culverts are pretty sharp, and in swinging up one, while going at about twenty-five miles an hour, we narrowly escaped going over the low stone wall into the ditch below.  On that and one other occasion the Professor took a firmer hold of the side of the machine, but, be it said to the credit of learning, at no time did he utter an exclamation, or show the slightest sign of losing his head and jumping—­as he afterwards remarked, “What’s the use?”

To any one by the roadside the danger of a smash-up seems to come and pass in an instant,—­not so to the person driving the machine; to him the danger is perceptible a very appreciable length of time before the critical point is reached.

The secret of good driving lies in this early and complete appreciation of difficulties and dangers encountered.  “Blind recklessness” is a most expressive phrase; it means all the words indicate, and is contra-distinguished from open-eyed or wise recklessness.

The timid man is never reckless, the wise man frequently is, the fool always; the recklessness of the last is blind; if he gets through all right he is lucky.

It is reckless to race sixty miles an hour over a highway; but the man who does it with his eyes wide open, with a perfect appreciation of all the dangers, is, in reality, less reckless than the man who blindly runs his machine, hit or miss, along the road at thirty miles an hour,—­the latter leaves havoc in his train.

One must have a cool, quick, and accurate appreciation of the margin of safety under all circumstances; it is the utilization of this entire margin—­to the very verge—­that yields the largest results in the way of rapid progress.

Every situation presents its own problem,—­a problem largely mechanical,—­a matter of power, speed, and obstructions; the chauffeur will win out whose perception of the conditions affecting these several factors is quickest and clearest.

One man will go down a hill, or make a safe turn at a high rate of speed, where another will land in the ditch, simply because the former overlooks nothing, while the latter does.  It is not so much a matter of experience as of natural bent and adaptability.  Some men can drive machines with very little experience and no instructions; others cannot, however long they try and however much they are told.

Accidents on the road are due to
Defects in the road,
Defects in the machine, or
Defects in the driver.

American roads are bad, but not so bad that they can, with justice, be held responsible for many of the troubles attributed to them.