I wonder how the world looked upon the internal combustion vehicle when it was entering its third decade? Were these same arguments made? Were people extolling the virtues and obvious benefits of horse drawn carriages over those noisy stinkpots?
If you read Motorcycle Cavalcade by Ixion ( the Rev. Basil Davies ) , as a pioneer motorcyclist he will tell you all you need to know on that subject .......
" Horsey " people very much held sway over the local magistrates .......... Speeds of 30 mph were considered to be the work of the devil .........
Horses and ponies , who for the first time in their lives would hear the staccato of exhausts , and the smell unburnt hydro-carbons , would take fright , rear up , and bolt off in the opposite direction at the sight of some dusty demon wearing giant Paris - Madrid goggles ( roads were un-metalled ) riding by ......
Sundays would be the day when most riders ventured out ............ Ordinary folk on their way to church wearing their Sunday best would find their clothes impregnated with gritty dust and animal shit thrown up from the un - metalled road surface as the bike or car went past , which was then almost impossible to remove ..........
When a ( presumably wealthy ) chap got hold of a 20 hp Mercedes , the local watch committee had the police position someone at each end of his road , and nabbed him every time he went out ...........
Horsey magistrates would show no mercy to anyone appearing before them on a motoring charge .
Ixion said he witnessed a driver of a quad and his two female passengers being attacked by an angry farmer with a whip as they pulled into the forecourt of an inn ........
This was almost understandable , as any vehicle travelling down a road would leave a dust cloud about twenty feet high , which would still be there an hour after the vehicle had passed by , leaving the hedgerows and wild flowers by the side of the road permanently stained with brown dust .
Ixion said he managed to avoid roughhouses with angry farmers and horse riders by stopping as soon as he spotted a horse rider coming the other way ......... stopping the engine ( which he would normally be loathe to do , with direct belt drive and no clutch ) ......... and pressing himself and the bike into the hedge , so as to make himself as invisible as possible , as the rider coaxed his quivering . nervous steed by .........
There is an amusing account of him ( with his sister as passenger ) trying to coax a ten speed quad ( or forecar ) up a hill near Lynmouth in Devon ........
I might dig it out one day ............. ( ...... you have been warned ........
..... ) ............
