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Show MAKE KOADS SAFE FOR .t,! It is apparent that the world was not made safe for democracy by wag. ing war. It should be apparent that roads can not be made safe for pedestrians or motorists by wagin war against the latter by prohibitive speed regulations or drastic police 1 rulings. I The motor car and truck have ' come to stay. They have come to stay because they save time, make speed. Eliminate the speed and the time-saving from motor cars and men would go back to horses. If the speed and the time-saving result in maimings and killings; if accidents and injuries follow the use of trucks on highways, then some other remedy must be found than will destroy the very factors of these instruments of transportation which make them vital to our modern life. The answer is plain; most people who have studied the question see it, and many acknowledge it. But it is not much talked about, because, forsooth, for-sooth, the politican dreads to say anything which may be construed as advocating more taxes, spending more money. Had the politican of twenty years ago advised farmers to spend five hundred or a thousand dollars for a new "team" to save time, he would have been defeated for office! But the answer must be made, and we, as a people, must see it, approve it, pay for it. The answer is wider roads; roads with high and low speed divisions; roads which can carry modern traffic! Not all roads, of course. But the main roads, the well-traveled roads, the intercity roads, the roads connecting con-necting State with State and county with county . . . these, either now or later, must be made wide enough to carry the present and the future traffic safely, assure the pedestrian of his life and whole limbs, the motorists of freedom from accident, and traffic the possibility of. making time without danger to anyone. When the automobile was new, people cried out against hard surface ' highway appropriations as "class legislation for speeders." Now the people know that hard surface highways high-ways are for them, first, for the "speeders'' afterwards. But we all want to make time, save time, go fast enough to get the benefit of our cars. Let us stop crying out against the added expense of the wide highway, which alone can make motor transport trans-port safe for us all. |
