Motor Crashes

It is a stormy evening, well after dark. The road is slick as an eel under your automobile's tires. You come to a curve, or a grade crossing. "Just the moment for an accident," you mutter to yourself. But, possibly because you recognize it as dangerous, this setting is not the one in which most automobile casualties come about. Not, at least, in New York State, as was shown in a survey of New York's 47,128 accidents during 1925, wherein 1,981 persons were killed and 54,398 injured. The most dangerous setting is this: A straight, level road, dry and hard.* Clear weather. Between five and six of a Saturday afternoon. You will run down a pedestrian about three times as often as you will hit another car. He will have been walking, running or playing in the street twice as often as just crossing it at an intersection. In 18.5% of cases, he will have been crossing the street properly at an intersection; in only 17.3% of cases will he have been "jay-walking"; in only 1.9% will he have been drunk. The chances are 27% that you were driving properly; 39% that you were inattentive (arm around girl, gaping at other car, reading street name, etc.); only 4% that you were speeding; only 4.7% that you skidded. Of New York's 47,128 accidents in 1925, only 148 occurred at railroad crossings. Pedestrians figured in 30,811 cases; 58,444 vehicles were involved. Pleasure cars were over three times as destructive as trucks, almost four times as destructive as taxicabs. Sunday ran Saturday a close second for "death day." Friday was third and Tuesday safest of all. Said the Scientific American: "If every one would cease 'jay-walking,' if children would keep off the roadways and streets, if young men would pet in parlors and drivers would obey the Eighteenth Amendment* a large percentage of our automobile accidents could be avoided."

*Doubtless this seeming paradox is explicable by the fact that few experienced motorists drive far over wet roads without snapping anti-skid chains on their tires. *The statistics did not warrant this admonition, showing less than 1% of cases where the driver was intoxicated.