Evening star., 1935-01-26
A National Scourge.

President RooSevelt's appeal to the
Governors of the States and the Com.
missioners Of the District Of Colum-
bia IT, adopt measures for the abate-
ment of the evil of increasing deaths
and injuries in automobile accidents
directa Nationwide attention to a
condition that undeniably demands
concentrated effort. Although the
summary of casualties from this cause
In the calendar year 1884 Is not COM
plete. it is known to have exceeded
the record Of all time Thousands
of lives have been sacrificed to speed
and carelessness and more thousands
of people have been gravely injured,
with tremendous cost in the loss of
earning power and in the treatment
of the surviving victims.
This has become a national prob
lem, of steadily increasing gravity.
Were the deaths and disablements in
cident to traffic in a single year at
tributable to disease a state of ma
| tional emergency would be proclaim
ed. Yet in the past twelve months
more lives have been lost and more
peoplH left crippled for life than have
been due to any general epidemic
that has ever swept over the land.
And zach community, contributing by
dozeI,s or scores or even by hundreds
OF fatalities and disablements, counts
its own losses without regard for the
great aggregate of needless national
suffering.
There are two causes for this
mounting Of traffic casualties, lack of
uniformity of rules and lack of sys-
temat:c rule enforcement. Within
the boundaries of any single jurisdic-
ton there are gross lapses from the
regulations that there prevail, and on
the road there is a largely contribut-
ing cause of casualties in the differ
ences of traffic rules, which tend to
confuse the operators of machines
and to lessen their sense of RESPONSE
bility.
Proposals for uniform State legis-
lation, the President notes, have been
worked out by the National Confer
ence on Street and Highway Safety,
with the cooperation of responsible
State officials and representatives of
interested organizations from all parts
of the country. But they have not
been put into effect. In this respect
the american people are somewhat
like the Chinese under the old regime,
when a reform was considered to be
effected as soon as it had been put
into writing and given the seal of the
monsfch. No plan car be effective
If 1t Is not written into law and the
law enforced strictly, with penalties,
promptly and unsparingly applied in
warning and correction.
Tha simple fact is that too many
people are driving cars who are not
competent to do so, people who are
dangerously disposed to speed, who re-
gard the streets and roads as their
own racing courses, who chafe at rules
and break them whenever they see
chance to do so without mourning
penalty. The motor car, capable of
high speed, is misused far more often
than even the shockingly high acci-
dent figures indicate, because no stead
fast, consistent effort is made to de-
prive those who are chronically in
clined to take dangerous chances of
the privilege of operating machines.
Each community should in its own
interest adopt and enforce rules which
have for their object the maintenance
Of a standard Of public safety, and
the surest way to achieve that end
is to remove from the streets those
who cannot or will not drive with
regard for the safety of others as
well as themselves.