All 115 graduates qualifying at Liverpool University Medical School in one year were sent a questionnaire in the final week of their preregistration year to assess the experience they had gained.Of the 105 graduates (92%) who replied, 99 (94%) considered the supervision that they had received to be adequate, 89 (85%) received most of their teaching from other junior doctors, and only 47 believed that they had learnt a considerable amount from their consultant colleagues. Half of the doctors received litde or no training in terminal care. Although 100 (95%) felt competent in dealing with various medical emergencies, cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills were less developed; only 71 (68%) were confident in using a defibrillator, and 37 (35%) considered themselves to be competent in dealing with cardiac arrhythmias. A fifth ofthe doctors found interviewing relatives stressful. Ofthe 105 doctors who replied, 77 (73%) thought that their preregistration experience had had little or no effect on their choice of career. IntroductionThe General Medical Council recommends that when graduates qualify they should have enough knowledge "to assume the responsibilities of a preregistration house officer" and have developed "the professional skills necessary to deal with common medical emergencies."' We report on a survey carried out among house officers to provide a subjective assessment of how well these aims had been fulfilled by the end of their house year.

In the New World motorways are much safer than in the United Kingdom, and the Americans have recently and sensibly, on the basis of traffic density, distinguished between rural and urban motorways. By this distinction nearly all Britain's motorways, and certainly the M25, would fall into the urban category and have a speed limit of 55 miles/h (88 km/h). Also the dangerous large range of speeds seen on British motorwavs is unknown in the New World and would be aggravated by an increase in the speed limit. I think that the speed limit should be reduced to 62 5 miles/h (100 km/h), as it is in Canada, and short white cross stripes painted on the lanes every 60 yards (54 m) to give drivers and the police an easily discernible indication of when thev are within the safe distance of the vehicle ahead. At this speed each car would be using about 55% of the fuel per mile that it would use at 84 miles/h. The percentage of deaths from road traffic accidents is also a dangerously misleading measure when comparing the safety of motorways and ordinary roads. There are no pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, etc, on motorways, who account for an appreciable proportion of deaths from road traffic accidents. A more objective assessment would be to compare the mortality of motorists per hour spent on motorways and other roads. These