You Have Been Warned! : A Complete Guide to the Road

According to statistics, there is in Great Britain one car to every thirty-three persons—that is to say, one to drive it, two to give advice from the back seat, one to oil and grease thoroughly and remove all tools, three to step in front of it and one to visit them and eat their grapes, one to devise means for speeding it up and four to devise means for slowing it down, one to draw pictures in the dust on the back, one to keep on taking it in part exchange, two to salute at cross-roads, fifteen to lean their bicycles against it at traffic stops, and one to fail to understand what’s come over everybody nowadays. It is to the last of these that this book is addressed.

           

Originally published in Britain in 1935, You Have Been Warned! is a compilation of such humorous advice for perplexed motorists. It contains perennially useful tips on such topics as hand signals for drivers—from “I am going to shake the ash off my cigarette” to “I am frightfully fond of horses”—and “The Road-User’s Statute of Liberty and Magna Carta of the Road.” A section on motor tours relates the pitfalls of reading maps and choosing hotels, and another offers sample driving examination questions. For example: Question: Describe the difference between roads made by the Romans and those constructed nowadays. Answer: The roads made by the Romans have lasted until the present time.

           

Illustrated throughout with more than one hundred witty line drawings by Fougasse, this new edition will be the ideal gift for beginning drivers as well as the “average motorist” who, “contrary to the general belief, does not go about the country intentionally causing disaster.”

Donald McCullough (1901–78) was a humorist and radio broadcaster whose previous works include Aces Made Easy, a witty guide to card games.

Fougasse was the pseudonym of Cyril Bird (1887–1965), a cartoonist best known for his contributions to, and editorship of, the satirical magazine Punch.