Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-01-24 | Page 8 | Carelessness Kills Many at Crossings

CARELESSNESS KILLS MANY AT CROSSINGS Ten Met Death and Forty-one Injured Along Oregon Short Line Because of .Recklessness. Ten persons were killed, forty-one injured in-jured and property of great value destroyed de-stroyed because of carelessness on the part of automobile drivers, all of which was easily preventable, J. C. Clark, assistant as-sistant to H. V. Piatt, vice president and general manager of the Oregon Short Line and in charge of the "safety first" activities of the road, said yesterday in connection with his annual report. The report includes a list of all crossing acci-. acci-. . dents on the road for the year endod December De-cember 31. Sixty-seven accidents occurred during the year. Some few of these occurred with horse-drawn vehicles, but by far the great majority were automobiles. The most, disastrous was that at Payette on August 6, when five persons were killed and one injured as a train struck an automobile. "Despite the crossing safety devices, bells, wi g wags. t es and wa tch m en , many automobile drivers insist on trying to beat the approaching train," Mr. Clark said yesterday. "Often they succeed. suc-ceed. Sometimes they fail- One driver miscalculated so erroneously that his machine crashed into the third car of the passenger train. These regrettable accidents acci-dents could he prevented so easily by the oxercise of a little care and common sense on the part of the drivers." A movement is on foot to organize a state safety council, vmder the National Safety council, and two meetings have been held in the offices of Preston A. Thatcher of the state Industrial commission commis-sion at the capitol. Employers, commercial commer-cial clubs and other organizations would be invited to become members. Since the safety movement was inaugurated inau-gurated by the Oregon Short Line in 1912, the accidents to employees of the road have been lessened by two-thirds.