Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-04-19


lessness where dogs and geese are i'm
periled to carelessness where human
beings are concerned.
Such men are the men whom we are
after-not the careful, decent citizen
who drives an automobile properly.
There is feeling in some quarters
that the National Highways Protective
Society is opposed to motoring. 1t is
not. On the other hand large proper
ton of its members own automobiles
but they drive them decently. A score
of years ago a man who drove a horse
through New York's streets at twenty
miles an hour would make the populace
hold up their hands in angry horror and
would be stopped and carted to the
station house before he had progressed
five blocks. Such speed was not as
dangerous in those days as it is in these;
yet how many times day can any of
US see motor racing up or down our
avenues at twice twenty miles an hour?
No special legislation was required to
stop mad drivers in past days. As
public perils they were very promptly
put in prison..
But in certain parts of New York
city now cars are driven every day upon
the public highway at rate of speed
approximating fifty miles an hour, and
frequently exceeding it. Such speed, of
course, is impossible to tolerate in day.
light hours in the section below Fifty
ninth street; but late at night the
scorchers tear up Broadway from the
lower ferries with the rapidity of ex-
press trains, and the upper avenues,
where traffic does not crowd until it
makes high speed impossible, are in
tested by them at all hours.
There has been mighty cutlery
against taxi carelessness. Statistics do
not Justify it; instead they point to reck-
lessness of private drivers as the fault
which most needs correction. Three
years ago the situation was reversed;
the taxis MANNED and killed the largest
share of those manned and killed by
motor cars. Our society then conferred
with the taxi companies and induced
them to so regulate the speed and the
control of their machines as to reduce.
in eighteen months, the fatalities due
to taxis from more than so per cent to
less than 2 per cent of the appalling
total. Although pedestrians have been
struck and hurt by taxis this year, so
far we've not had one fatality due to
the reckless driving of taxcab.
"The public driver has become more
cautious than the private driver. This,
obviously, is not as it should be.
There is a growing class of taxi
drivers in New York who own their own
machines and are not, therefore, respon-
sible to any company or boss, and they,
unfortunately, are as dangerous as the
private chauffeurs who do exactly as
they like without instructions from their
owners, or go further and instruct their
owners as to what it may be safe to do
But the company-owned taXis are no
longer serious offenders, and the revolu-
ton which has thus been worked with
them may, if proper effort is put forth,
be accomplishedswith privately owned
taxis and with private cars in general.
''We.have worked diligently on the
taxi question and have achieved results.
One company has installed in many of
its cabs an instrument which, fitted to
the cars dash, records on paper tape the
speed at. which that car is run during
every minute while it is out of the
garage. The man who lets his car speed
up beyond the maximus of fifteen miles
an hour, is for the first offence, warned
sharply, for the second offence he is sus-
pended, for the third he is discharged.
The cabs belonging to this company are
not concerned in any killings.
'"The caution of such companies de-
serves due credit, but in it indirectly lies
peril. 1t is human and especially
American for the crook to hide beneath
the mantle OF the honest man. While
such careful management is to some ex-
tent relieving taXicabs of suspicious su-
pervision, the reckless individual taxi
owners are taking full advantage of
that fact and running wild. In many
ways they are peril.
'lf your wife lost diamond brooch
in any taxi permitted to stand in front
of first-class hotel or restaurant, for
example, she would very likely get it
back again. If, on the other hand, she
lost it in night-hawk taxi, or in any
independent cab. the chance would not
be so good of its return to her.
There are decent men who own the
cabs they drive and operate them
decently. l don't want to maign them;
but there are too many taxis in New