Evening star., 1933-12-31

our greatest driving menaces."
population, located Immediately north
of Chicago, with a heavy through traffic
to and from Chicago. The outside work
of the traffic division is accomplished
by squads which are on the job "a hours
a day in three shifts. The squad cars
carry, as standard equipment, camera
with tripod and hashlight apparatus,
100 feet of tape, decelerometer, portable
typewriter, statement and report forms,
frst-aid kit, sawed-of shotgun, and
radio.
A very important part of the detec-
tive work takes place in the Office, and
consists Of the study OF accidents. We
have pin map showing graphically
the location of every accident, and card
records are also kept by street locations.
When as many as four accidents occur
at a given location within moderate
space of time, it becomes clear that there
must be some reason aside from mere
carelessneSs on the part of the drivers.
We then make special study to detect
what is wrong and how to correct it.
At Greenleaf and Asbury, for example,
within a six-month period there were
five serious accidents. These were colli-
sionS, and the common factor in all of
them was that one of the cars was going
north while the other was going east.
There were no billboards, buildings or
other ordinary distractions on the
southwest corner to reduce visibility,
so we took two cars and sent one OF
them north and the other east at this
point to seek some reason for the
crashes.
What we found was very simple. A
was planted on a slight rise OF ground,
and was just high enough for its foliage
to blend with the lower branches of
some young trees in the parkway be-
yond. 1t made a perfect curtain to cut
of the view Of approaching drivers, and
was deceptive because the obstruction
was not evident. The remedy was
pruning.
AT West Railroad and Central street
we encountered a somewhat similar
problem. This is busy corner with
traffic lights and an east-and-weSt street
car line. We had good deal of diff
Guilty, however, in establishing any COM
mon factor in the large number of acci-
dents that were occurring. We saw
that most of the cars doing the striking
we're eaStbound; but the cars struck
might be going either north south
We finally hit on a clue when we no
ticed that most Of the accidents were
occurring between 4 and 7:30 in the
evening on clear days. Investigation
proved a guess correct-with the sun
low in the West, reflections made it
impossible for eastbound drivers to tell
whether the lights were red, green, or
off altogether. Non-phantom refiectorS
reduced the accidents 40 per cent.
In some places, for various reasons,
even serious traffic hazards cannot be
eliminated. Our study helps us here,
too, for it is on these points that we
focus our enforcement efforts.
One fact shown by the records was
that 70 per cent of our fatalities were
occurring in the southwest part of the
city, a Polish section with fairly heavy
traffic and lot of children. To meet
this problem we sent a Polish motor
cycle officer to patrol the district in
tensively, with instructions to catch
every boy or girl he saw playing in the
street and to talk turkey to the child
and it's parents. He did it-in their
own language, in their own homes, and