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Show j SAFETY COUNCIL SAYS SPEEDERS KILL 15,000 PERSONS EACH YEAR j Declaring that "speeders are getting away with murder," I the nationwide newspaper campaign to reduce the 1952 traffic accident toll today centered its fire mainly on speeding drivers, i who alone killed 15,000 men, women and chi'dren and claimed 1 500,000 injured victims last year. I Public safety specialists thruout the country have branded excessive speed as "Killer No. 1" in traffic accidents and urged j that the most intensive law enforcement drives against speeders . be undertaken this year in all states. They have also proposed i that all official and unofficial groups interested in greater t safety on the highways initiate educational programs during ' 1952 to help lower the high toll I of deaths and injuries attribut-' attribut-' able to speed by persuading ; drivers to "slow down for , safety's sake." I ' i The key relationship of speed to the upward death curve in , highway accidents in recent years has definitely been established, estab-lished, according to Thomas N. Boate, public safety director of the Association of Casualty and Surety Companies and acting manager of its accident preven tion department. The tendency to higher speeds increased deaths on highways in rural areas by 3,200 in 1950, he said, accounting for all but 300 of the 3,500 jump that year in the death toll for the nation as a whole, compared with 1949. Last year, he added, rural deaths due to speed probably lies, and other innocent persons on the streets and highways. Excessive speed increases the severity of accidents to two to three times, compared with mis-I mis-I haps at lower speeds, Mr. Boate emphasized. In one state a sur- -vey showed that on a superhighway super-highway where speeds of 70 miles per hour were permitted, and often exceeded, 4.5 per cent of all accidents were fatal, compared with 1.5 pe rcent in crashes on other highways in the same state. , "Speed is now causing up to half of all motor vehic'e deaths in a number of states," Mr. Boate said. "A correspondingly corresponding-ly high proportion of those injured in-jured and crippled for life in highway accidents are caused by speeding. Speed killed 13,300 men, women and children chil-dren and its injured victims totaled 475,000 in 1950. Last year these casualties were greatly increased because of the growing tendency to speed. On the highways, speed is Killer Kill-er No. 1 and its toll will continue con-tinue to grow year after year unless enforcement officials, the public and millions of drivers driv-ers themselves take concerted action against needless, heedless heed-less speeding. "There is almost a 50-50 chance that if you have a fatal accident it will be caused by speeding, so why not slow down, keep within sensible limits, and have a better chance of arriving safely at your destination?" increased nearly 5,000 over the 1949 total. A former captain of Pennsylvania's Pennsyl-vania's state police who has often seen dead speeders and their innocent victims in wrecks on the highways, Mr. Boate urged that speeders be made the No. 1 target of enforcement en-forcement and educational cam-' cam-' paigns thruout 1952 "to make a. real start toward saving 10,-000 10,-000 lives this year" the goal of more than 8,000 newspapers' intensive highway safety efforts. ef-forts. He recommended that law enforcement authorities be backed up in every possible way in drives to round up and penalize speeders. In some states, Mr. Boate pointed out, drivers lose their driving privileges for speeding-offenses. speeding-offenses. This has been an effective ef-fective deterrent, he said, expressing ex-pressing the hope that more states would take similar action to curb "veritable jet-propelled speeds" on the open road and thus help to hold down the growing number of fatalities. But drivers themselves, he declared, must be convinced of the utter folly of reckless j , speeds to "save time," endan-1 I gering themselves, thier fami- ' |