The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1938-10-13
Darkness. Death
Truffic Accidents
Accidents Tell Story More
Them $4,000 Killed
In. 1887

The traffic accident problem today
is everybody's problem because there
are few of us who do not at one time
or another, or in some way, have the
advantage of automOtive transporta-
ton. In 1887, 29,7O5,2 ,220 motor ve-
hicles were registered in the United
States-over 100000 more than
were in operation in all other coun-
tries put together. With but six per
cent of the worlds population, we op-
crate seventy per cent of the worlds
automobiles.
And those of us who do not own
automobiles or have one in the family,
still use the streets and highways. We
have to if we want to get anywhere,
and the fact that more than $4,000
pedestrians were killed in 1887 tells
its own story.
Yes, we all have direct interest in
the traffic accident problem-and the
man who goes off to work every day,
possibly more than most. For not only
is there great army employed in op-
Grating the vast fleet of trucks, buses,
and commercial vehicles in service all
over the country, but everyone, re-
gardless Of his job, must get to it, and
in order to do so, must menture the
highways and streets.
1t is not the intention of this article
to deal broadly with all of the fac
tors relating to the problems of
traffic safety-there are too many of
them. However, there is a segment of
the whole problem that has been too
little thought of in the past and about
which too little had been done. That
problem is night traffic safety and the
relation of light and visibility to it.
During 1887, about 23,800 people
were killed by automobiles after dark.
In other words, 500 Of the total &c.,
700 traffic fatalities occurred during
night. time hours when only one out of
every four or five cars was on the
road. 1t doesn't take calculus with
those statistics to figure out that night
driving is anywhere from six to ten
times as dangerous as driving in the
daytime-the variation of six to ten
because every stretch Of highway has
different accident experience, and on
many highways the night accident
rate is even higher than that.
1t is only comparatively recently
that we have started to question why
it is that there should be such a dis
parity between night and day driving
and just as recently that we have dis
covered that the rate of night fatali-
ties varies in almost direct ratio to
the degree of visibility or light pro-
vided for the driver.
When light was first conceived as
essential to an advanced state of liv-
ing, no one knows. One would prob
ably have to 60 back to the first man
to come anywhere near close-back to
the man whose life was ordered by the
sun, who lived and worked only as the
daylight allowed, and who, therefore,
worshipped the sun as supreme pow
er and deity. We have come long
way since that time-through the ages
when men stole few extra hours
from the night with blazing pine
knots; through the early, crude de-
velopment Of the torch and the oil
lamp; through the days of the flicker
ing candles to the distribution and
utilization of gas; through all of these
thousands of years to this age-to
this age Of electricity and light.
And this is an age of LIGHT
Frightening our homes and our shops,
flooding our ball parks and race
tracks, cleaning along our streets,
turning night into day. The sun is our
master no longer.
Yet here we are in this same age of
light, in this year of 1888, tearing
along at so miles an hour and up over
highways which, except for the bare
200 feet of visibility afforded by head
lights, are just as dark as the roads
over which the coaches ratified from
Boston to Worcester two hundred
years ago.
How can the disparity between night
and day fatalities be explained? Ger
tainly not through finding that there
comes with the falling of night amy
mysterious change in the driver, the
car, the highway, enforcement, or the
weather. The first three are constants
enforcement is no less rigid at night,
and the weather, so far as is known,
has no preference for the hours in
which to do it's worst. Certainly it
cannot be explained by traffic densi-
ties for only one-ffth to one-fourth as
many cars are on the road at night
as in the daytime. Incidentally, too,
there are about 76O more daylight
hours in the course of a year than
there are those of dusk or darkness.
Finally, it is impossible to escape
the fact that the only major variable
which could possibly explain the great
difference between night and day ex-
perience is illumination.
In the daytime driver has any
where up to 10,000-ft candles of nat
ural illumination. At night he has
practically no illumination at all. In
consequence, automobiles carry head
lights which provide, at $50 feet, a
fraction of lift. candle. Think of it
from 10,0OO-ft. candles of light in the
daytime to fraction of one-foot cam
die at night!
Now look at If this wav Analyze