Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1905-12-29

~ IL IN JbSt Gu On
pable of reaching and maintaining high
speed-twenty-five, forty. sixty, eighty
miles an hour. But mark the primary
condition under which the automobile
is turnover a roadbed prepared with
never a thought of Il and guarded not
an automobiles length of the way.
Couple TO this the facts that IT is inn
possible for the average automobiles
To have even a cursory knowledge or
more than a few miles of road, COM
~paratively speaking. and that he has to
take no examination to prove that he
has a working knowledge of the ma
chimes mechanism, and IL is not very
difficult TO comprehend that nothing
short of fendish recklessness is the sole
cause of practically all automobile
wrecks and accidents, with their fire.
quent fatalities ana never
failing injuries.
Not long ago a man of my acquatnt-
ance, who had owned a thirty-horse
power touring car less than a month,
took il out TO spec. IL over a piece or
road which he had never travelled. Only
a kind Providence kept him from wreck
ing his machine while making two ex-
ceedingly sharp and unexpected curves
at startling speed. AS it was, a wheel
finally struck a deep rut on a straight
stretch, the machine sweryed suddenly,
struck a stone pile on the roadside
full tilt and was completely wrecked;
While the man was hurled, as II from
a %catapult, into a nearby fleld, was
picked up unconscious and taken home,
where the family physician spent the
better part of two weeks getting am
on his feet again.
The Mania for Speed.
THE reckless automobilist, of which
this mar was 81 type until the accident
49, -1,-A i,tn hic hand ana
knocked out his mania for speed, ut
terly overlooks the patent fact that
speeding on a road not built for 1t ana
of whose twistings and urnings ana
other p~eculiarities he is rather more,
than less. ignorant, is humanity certain
to result in an accident to machine ana
driver sooner or later. Such an uiti-
mate result is as natural as that TWO
and two makes four. Fol- If locomotives
and h trains of cars they draw are
frequently wrecked on specially pre-
pared roadbeds and despite all manner
of safeguards that human ingenuity
can invent and apply. how can 1t be
otherwise than that wrecks and accl-
dents should mark the flight or the,
reckless automobilist, speeding, as ne
does, over the meanest and
of dirt roads with h same abandon
that characterizes him on the finest
anu NIdlSiAlcSN u NY
stretches?
Don't deceive yourself into believ~
ing thai this is not the customary re-
suit of recklessness, because the num-
Der of accidents to n
their occupants is relatively small COM
pared with the Whole number OF ma
chimes in use; close on to 2 5000 automo
biles are licensed in the state of New
York alone. Rather, let this be evil
dence in your mind in support of the
recent automobilist's statement that
the number of reckless drivers, 10Th
professionals and amateurs, is consld-
erably less thar 10 per cent. of the
whole. Once the public generally ar
rives at this wholly sane conclusion by
the very simple method of comparing
the ways of the careful locomotive
driver and the needless motor car
driver, the present prejudice against US
as a class will vanish and the public
will get after the real criminals in so
determined a fashion that they Will
speedily forsake their evil ways.
Whats needed to solve this problem
of reckless driving, with Its
fatalities and accidents, is sanity. The
present speed laws in this country are
far from being sane. The speed laws
In France have been proved by results
to be sane. Let our legislatures give
us some such M law, and / firmly
believe the large portion of reckless
drivers will speedily kill themselves,
and then the problem will be solved
definitely and finally"