These booths are promptly located in some of the most remote areas in mountainous or swampy areas or near intersections where accidents have often occurred. The key to such a booth can be a lifeline for a club member. He can not only ask for help at the workshop, but also call, for example, the headquarters of the Automobile Association or the Royal Automobile Club of the area where he is located, or even London — if necessary, then in the middle of the night — and get any advice.

Here is a true case that took place a few years ago: a motorist who had just got a car had a puncture on his first trip late at night. Due to a number of exceptional reasons, it was impossible to contact either the detourer or the workshop. Nevertheless, the club's headquarters patiently explained to him by phone where to find the jack and puller, how to lift the car, how to remove the wheel, etc.

In an emergency, a club member can use the same phone number to send an order to someone who cannot be called. In case of illness at home or other similar incidents, the club can instruct its detourers to immediately find his car in the area where he is supposed to be, and they will inform him about the incident.

One of the main duties of a detourer is to monitor the condition of the roads. If traffic is delayed by flooding, snowfall, or a major accident, detourers immediately report this to headquarters, and drivers may soon see emergency signs indicating detours. Car clubs have a large stock of unfilled metal road signs, blue or yellow — the color of the clubs; they can be quickly filled and placed.

Before sports competitions and other events that attract a lot of people, car clubs prepare these signs in advance. Before the cricket match between England and Australia in Birmingham in June 1967, which was supposed to last 3 days, an Automobile Association inspector drove 640 km in advance, precisely marking the places for 250 road signs, which took a whole week to arrange. These two car clubs are being installed (and removed) about 140,000 temporary road signs per year.

All such work related to traffic conditions is carried out by car clubs, of course, in cooperation with the police, and in special cases the police themselves and other authorities sometimes ask them to put up a sign — this work is paid for by the clubs.

Information about the condition of roads is available to the entire population of England. All important messages are constantly appearing in the press, broadcast on radio and television, and at any time you can dial 8021 in your area and get the information you need. In winter, this is mainly weather data, in summer it is more information about traffic jams and congestion, often caused by the density of traffic on the roads during the holidays.

So far, I have only talked about the work carried out by the clubs in connection with travel delays. In most cases, most motorists rarely use such services. On their travels, they are quite content with the four-centimeter-thick annual handbook issued by their club. For example, in the directory of the Royal Club, they will find 64 pages of maps covering the entire territory of Great Britain and Ireland, which, among other details, give the distance in miles from one road intersection to another. william hill ελλαδα