Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-10-15
SANE AND INSANE
AUTOMOBILING


F history is ever written of the auto
MODELLING season in the north, which
may be said to have been brought to a
IA formal and exciting close yesterday
with the road contest for the Wander
bilt cup, not the least instructive chapter
will deal with the wrecks that have mark
ed the seasons sport and the numerous ia
talities, not to mention manning and lesser
injuries, that have resulted directly from
the wrecks at one time or another strew-
ing the highways and byways of the land.
Until the statistics of the season are conf
piled 1t will be impossible to state with any
degree of accuracy the number of auto
me bilists killed and injured. But the num-
Der will certainly prove well nigh appalling
when it is taken into consideration that one
can recall off-hand numerous newspaper
accounts of automobile wrecks In each or
which one or more lives were lost.
1t was in the early part Of June that an
automobile was driven off a drawbridge into
the Chicago river; three of the four occu-
pants were drowned, the survivor being
seriously injured.
About the same time a locomotive crashed
into touring car occupied by Richard 5.
Sayer a prominent New Yorker, and his
family. Mr.. and Mrs. Sayer were killed out
right and the two children MANNED for life.
The day following, believe, an automoblhst
was killed and his three guests injured by
the formers machine smashing into a fence
in a Massachusetts town, Saugus by name
In August there occurred. among others,
two tragic accidents that attracted more
than the usual attention.
Early in the month locomotive wrecked
at a grade crossing in Bennington VT, the
touring car i'm which New York's third dep
uty police commissioner, Harris LINDSEY,
and his fiancee, Miss Evelyn F. Willing of
Chca go were riding with the result that
both were instantly killed.
Hardly had the flowers on the graves of
these victims withered when the country
was startled by the news that Vinson F.
Walsh the seventeen-year-ol son of the
famous western mining millionaire Thomas
F. Walsh, had driven his automobile of
bridge into a creek near fashions New
port himself meeting instant death and
causing serious Injuries to his sister, Miss
Evelyn L. Walsh Mrs. James L. Kerno-
chan, one of Americas leading horsewo-
men; Harry e. Oelrichs and Herbert c..
Pell, ir.
The first part of last month was marked
by a fatal accident peculiarly like the
Walsh accident in that the automobile was
driven off a bridge near the little New Jer-
sey town of Atco, and also strikingly like
the LindsIey-Willing tragedy. In that the
two victims, Neill Wolfe and Miss Marie
Hamill of Philadelphia, were affianced.
But why continue to recall parts of the
gruesome record? Suffice 1t to say that
persons who have kept in close touch with
the seasons wrecks are pretty well agreed
that scarcely a week passed without Its
fatality and certainly not without its own
list Of more or less seriously injured.
Naturally, so many serious wrecks have
caused the question to be raised. What has
been the general cause of them? Wherever
two or more automobiles who have the
true interests of the sport at heart are
gathered together, this query invariably
crops out and before it has been put aside
another question usually comes to the fore,
What will be the ultimate effect of these
fatal wrecks upon the automobile situation
in this country?
that the wrecks are in nowise due to any
structural defects in automobiles. What,
then Is the true explanation of the blood
smeared jumbles of machinery that have
caused the country to raise its hands In
horror?
simply misunderstanding short of
criminal reeklessness on the part of very
small minority of the country's automo-
bilists," said leading automobile manu-
facturer, who has been giving much time
lately to efforts to discourage reckless driv-
ing. II will go further and call this par
ticular form of recklessness the most fiend-
ish that the human being Is capable of.
ITO make perfectly plain to you the real
depths of the recklessness, and its folly, let
me contrast for you the methods of the
trained locomotive engineer and the reck-
less amateur driver Of q motor car-the
fiend who brings wholly unmerited disrepute
upon the heads of all reputable automobile
lists of whatever community
Before a man is accepted by any rail-
road as a locomotive engineer he must not
only have become thoroughly acquainted
with the locomotive, but the division of the
track over which he will run the delicate
and fearfully made mechanism. This he
Inn- hxyo i've n Nyl zre 1Ar.cr<
premiership fireman. Then, once seated