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Show Traffic Engineering Needs Public Support low nuu'li iloes it cost to Iiave an accident this year? Wind's t!u over-llu-counter price for a medium-sized emus hup? The muswer comes from a sur-vj vov m.ule in the city of Lansing, Mii'h., b.V the Traffic Engineering Division of the National Conservation Conserva-tion ' Bureau, which offers the fol-I fol-I lowing price list for persons involved in-volved in an accident: Average injured pedestrian:, $468 Iveraged injured driver $408 Average injured passenger $206 voraae uninjured driver $73 Lansing figures indicate that the average accident victim pays ?170 in salary, another $92 in doctor doc-tor and hospital bills, $26 for miscellany mis-cellany such as attorney fees, fines, claim settlements, etc., and, if he is a car owner, he shells out $200 for auto repairs. The survey purports to show exactly how much cash is extracted extract-ed from the pockets of ordinary citizens through auto accidents and. conversely, indicates that a lare percentage ot accidents can be "overcome through a public awareness of hazardous conditions and what is being done to overcome over-come them. Traffic administrators admin-istrators agree that the biggest single factor in eliminating accidents acci-dents on both rural and city highways high-ways is that of public support. With only a trivial variation of fimres, it is probable that the Lansing report would be applicable applica-ble to the citizens of Utah or any other state. State and city officials offi-cials admit that they know where the hazards are but they ask the question: "How much do Utah - citizens think it's worth to make : the highways and the vehicles of 1 this state safe?" It is a known fact that city of- facials will spend public funds in accordance with the wishes of the people, and to demonstrate the value of expenditures made for I traffic engineering projects, a j summation was recently made by National Conservation Bureau of 54 case histories of traffic engineering engi-neering problems in every part of the country. Each case involved death or injury and showed that application of remedial traffic engineering en-gineering such as traffic signals, road markers, overpasses and the like, brought about a 94 percent reduction of traffic deaths, an 88 percent reduction of traffic injuries injur-ies and a 94 percent reduction of accident cost. Accident prevention organizations organiza-tions have long been stressing the fact that highway safety is an entirely personal affair, and individuals in-dividuals are urged to question the expenditures of public funds since taxation is calculated to support the most effective methods of highway safety available. Records in the offices of many city and state traffic officials shows that their hands are tied because the public balks at expense and they explain-the short-sightedness of this argument by pointing to the death and accident toll as well as the approximately two billion bil-lion dollars that U. S. citizens paid out of their own pockets for auto accidents during the past year. This amount could have bought a lot of common sense safety in the way of new freeways, safety isles, road markers and over-passes instead of being poured down the waste drain. Here is where public support plays an important part, because public officials are elected and hired to do the bidding of prudent citizens. Safety officials suggest that the matter of expenditures expen-ditures for traffic safety, both in the construction of the highways and in the supervision of vehicles, be urged as an item of public discussion dis-cussion in social and civic groups as well as in schools and at home because,- they point out, the one sure-fire method of ordering highway high-way safety is through the voice of the people. |