The Good Driver

Back during the dusty, tire-patching era of the Pope-Hartford and the Apperson Jackrabbit, the average U.S. citizen seldom got behind an automobile wheel without secretly feeling a little like a man climbing aboard a racing camel or a Mallet locomotive. In the years since, he has gone right on believing that only his innate coolness, intelligence and mechanical aptitude have enabled him to remain the master of the gas buggy. But last week Northwestern University's Traffic Institute had news for him.

High-grade morons (with a mental age of between ten and twelve years), said the institute's Research Director James Stannard Baker, make the best automobile drivers. If the moron's eyesight is a little below par, all the better--keeps his mind on the job. "The operation of a motor car," Baker explained, "is too dumb a job to command the attention of those who are particularly bright." And people with sharp eyes are apt to be distracted by shop windows or pretty faces.

On the other hand, "Once the low-mentality motorist is taught to drive properly, he will not deviate from what he has learned," and neither will he be mooning about foreign relations or calculus. Baker was of the opinion that drivers with such "handicaps" as extraordinary vision or high I.Q.s should be warned about them when being licensed.

It seemed at first glance like a cruel blow to the great American ego. But a quick look at the U.S. accident rate seemed certain to restore the national confidence; only a race of geniuses, if the Baker theory was to be believed, could have brought it so high.

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