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Show TRAFFIC CONTROL VERY IMPORTANT Matter of Right-of-Way on Streets Still Continues Paramount Issue. (By C. B. AUOL, President National Safety Council.) The first automobile brought with it a complex problem which has increased in-creased in complexity until at the present time it affects, directly or indirectly, in-directly, every inhabitant of this country. coun-try. There are now 17,700,000 automobiles auto-mobiles registered In the United States, and it Is estimated that by 1950 there will be 30,000,000. There is one automobile for every six people in this country. Cities were almost wholly unprepared to meet this new age of transportation, and the question of traffic control has risen suddenly in Importance. Almost anyone who travels trav-els the streets of our large cities either afoot or in the cushioned seats of an automobile realizes the vast necessity for adequate means of controlling traffic. Right-of-Way Question. One of the quibbles of motorists and pedestrians is : Who has the right-of- way? A poet with an ample sense of humor has written an ode to the man who died maintaining his right-of-way. Laws have been passed in an attempt to define the matter of the right-of-way on the streets, but still it continues contin-ues as a paramount issue in the traffic control problem. It is demonstrated daily in the larger larg-er cities that proper control and supervision su-pervision of traffic has resulted in fewer accidents. Elimination of left-hand left-hand turns, segregation of street traffic, pedestrian control, traffic officers, synchronized traffic lights, and numerous numer-ous other devices have been, invented to lessen the hazards to life and limb. Busy streets where traffic is thus controlled con-trolled have much fewer accidents, in proportion to the number of vehicles and pedestrians, than uncontrolled streets have. Traffic-Control Problem, A feature of the traffic-control problem prob-lem is the Increasing Importance of mechanically operated control. The traffic officer is becoming a huge burden bur-den of expense to the larger cities. In the congested districts there are sometimes some-times as many as four or more officers on each of two or three shifts supervising super-vising the traffic at one intersection. The salaries of these men, capitalized at 6 per .cent, sometimes represent a permanent investment of half a million dollars for one intersection. As an example of what the synchronized synchron-ized traflic signal can do for traffic, the city of Chicago may be cited. Michigan avenue, which is an unusually wide street, bears the heaviest through-traffic through-traffic in that city. In the length of street covered by the traffic lights, fatalities fa-talities have been reduced 75 per cent since the lights were installed two years ago. The use of these signals has been found to speed up traffic during dur-ing the rush hours, although it slows it during the non-rush periods. |