Rear View Mirror

The next time you glance in your rearview mirror, thank woman’s ingenuity. Specifically, you can thank a woman named Dorothy Levitt, a British secretary who shocked conventional society in Edwardian times by becoming a racecar driver. What’s more, she was very good at it, winning race after race. In 1906, she set the woman’s world speed record, going 91 miles per hour in a speed trial in Blackpool, England. She was called “the fastest girl on earth.”

That same year, she wrote a book entitled The Woman and the Car. It was described as a “chatty little handbook” for women who wanted to learn to drive. In it, Levitt championed the rights of women motorists, saying, “There may be pleasure in being whirled around the country by your friends and relatives or in a car driven by your chauffeur; but the real, the intense pleasure comes only when you drive your own car.”

Among the driving techniques given in Levitt’s book is this one: Women should carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place so they can hold the mirror “aloft from time in order to see behind while driving in traffic.”

Thereafter, many people kept a little mirror on the seat beside them, occasionally holding it “aloft” to find out who or what was following them. It wasn’t until 1914 that car manufacturers actually acted on Levitt’s suggestion and included rearview mirrors on vehicles sold to the public.

Today we’re thankful for our rearview and side-view mirrors, for they’ve saved thousands of lives including, perhaps, yours and mine. But it’s hard to drive if we’re staring into the rearview mirror all the time. When we’re behind the wheel, most of our attention is devoted to the windshield with only occasional glances into the mirrors.

That’s the way we should live, too. It’s important to keep our eyes on the road in front of us. If we’re constantly focused on where we’ve been instead of where we’re going, we’re in big trouble.

Past; Regret; Progress

Turning Points

Aug. 2007

Pages 16-17