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Show Editorial: A HIGHWAY SAFETY "MUST" In the half century that the automobile has been on the scene, the average span of life in America has increased about' 21 years. For this we can largely thank medical and surgical advances, not the reckless reck-less drivers of automobiles. Indeed, the average span of life today would be even higher if such drivers had not killed 1,000,000 persons since the turn of the century cen-tury -300,000 of them in the decade between 1941 and 1950. Last year more than 300,000 year of life were wiped out in traffic accidents that claimed over 6,500 victims between the ages of 15 and 25 alone. These are the years in which educations are finished, careers started, marriages made and families founded. Parents Par-ents had watched over these young lives until eyes, once filled with pride and hope, became glazed with stunned unbelief when word came of the tragic end. "Why did it have to happen?" they sobbed. Why, indeed? An average of between 44 and 52 years of promising and potentially fruitful life were destroyed in each instance. Relatively few of these 6,500 young victims were pedestrians, probably because be-cause they had been trained in grade school in the ways of pedestrian safety. Nearly all were killed while driving or riding in accident-bound automobiles. The accidents were largely due to the inexpert, careless care-less driving habits of youth. . Driver education, which trains young men and women to be safe drivers before they take the wheel of the family car, is offered today by only. 38 per cent of the nation's high schools. These courses are taken i every year by about 600,000 high school students, or I 44 per cent of those eligible to enroll. Through such courses a determined effort is being made to improve the tragic accident record of drivers between the ages of 16 and 25, which is nearly twice as bad as it should be in relation to the group's percentage of all drivers. When students learn to become safe drivers in high school, their chances of avoiding serious accidents acci-dents are usually three times better than those -of youths who have not had such training. The cost of driver education is small and its rewards are great. It can make a great contribution to highway safety if all high school' students received it. Communities that fail at least to offer it overlook one of the obvious "musts" of real highway safety. |