From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Cause of an accident involving car 15-EX, debating whether skidding or a steering issue was the primary cause.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 181\M10\ img049 | |
| Date | 4th April 1928 | |
| S/W. c. to BJ. Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} CWB8/GM4.4.28. ACCIDENT TO 15-EX. Thank you for your Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}3/LG3.4.28. I can make arrangements to discuss the cause of this accident as you suggest, either on the 11th, 12th, or 13th. I consider that it is desirable at the same time to put on record during this investigation anything that Mr. Grylls can tell us, both with regard to the skid he experienced prior to the accident and also with regard to the accident itself, and I am therefore writing to him today to ask which of these days will be most convenient to him and will advise you immediately I hear from him. I enclose herewith a fuller report of this accident than you have yet seen, which embodies all that I know and can say regarding it, together with an extract from a letter from PN.{Mr Northey} to myself of 29.3.28 written after receipt of a letter from me telling him of it and giving the information of my report. From the enclosures to your memo, Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}3/LG3.4.28., I have gathered the impression that it is thought I was attributin the cause of this accident to the steering. This is not the case. The cause of the accident was unquestionably the car skidding under circumstances when a skid could not have been anticipated and any comments I have made about the steering are to the effect that, under such circumstances any sponginess in the steering makes it more difficult to get out of a skid and tends to make the car hunt from a skid in one sense to one in the opposite sense and so on and that in this car at the time, in fact throughout the whole of the time when I was driving it, the degree of selectivity and the amount of sponginess were such as to make quick recovery from such a skid impossible. I make note that in hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}'s report he states that the car was driven at 30 m.p.h. on a highly cambered road, and the behaviour was considered satisfactory under this somewhat exacting test. I agree that such a test is very exacting, but at no time whilst I was with this car would I have attempted such a trial, in fact, I found in practice that at any speed over about 72 to 75 m.p.h. I could not be certain of passing any given obstruction within 18" and found it necessary in practice to ease down to somewhere about 55 m.p.h. at the time when another car had to be passed on the road. Therefore there appears to be a very definite difference of opinion regarding the characteristics of the steer-ing of this car at the time it left Chateauroux and at the time I was with it. It may be that contd :- [Handwritten text next to paragraph 5: on steering wheel] | ||