Transport: Safety Dividend

“Driving on the public highway will become a sporting proposition as much as deer hunting is today, when every instructed hunter enters the woods under a code which takes into consideration his fellow hunter.”

Aimed at U. S. motorists (who last year bagged a record 39,500 motorists and pedestrians on U. S. highways) was this crack made last week by Ford Motor Co.’s grey, blunt William J. Cameron at a

Manhattan meeting of the Automotive Safety Foundation. Speaker Cameron was simply drawing a bead on the Foundation’s aim to bring about full cooperation of all concerned—driver, pedestrian, manufacturer and roadbuilder—in a widespread highway-safety program.

The Safety Foundation was organized last year by the automotive industry to check the appalling traffic toll of life, limb and property. Substituting a program of Engineering, Education and Enforcement for the desperate “— and sudden death” approach to highway-safety problems, the Foundation has thus far contributed $1,250,000 to some 16 safety organizations, educational and legislative movements, traffic engineering institutions and personnel-training bodies working for safer highways. By last week this investment had paid a big dividend. Lower by 7,400 than the preceding one-year period’s was the traffic fatality score for the twelve months ending October 31.

To fears that the 1938 automotive slump might have brought reductions in the industry’s contributions to the Foundation, an allaying answer was given by Paul Gray Hoffman, who is Studebaker’s as well as the Foundation’s energetic president. Anticipated for 1939’s work is $1,650,000.