Automobile transmission systems should not, must not, indeed cannot, remain as they are much longer. Not one of them is efficient enough for it to deserve to survive; not one of them is foolproof enough for the next generation of drivers — the majority of whom, in countries hitherto considered undeveloped, may have no inherited tradition of, nor sympathy for, skilled driving — to use. The direction that future developments must take is subject to a number of influences, not all of which are predictable. We cannot forecast natural phenomena nor economic phenomena beyond the immediate future; we cannot tell how the next generation, and certainly not the generation after that, will think, beyond the probability that it will think differently from us. We cannot foretell what novelty may supervene to make the vehicle as we know it obsolete, as the petrol engine made steam obsolete in transport, as the car and aeroplane made the horse and the sailing ship obsolete.
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