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Show 'DRIVERS WHO TAKE 'ONE MORE FOR jIHE ROAD' ARE PUBLIC MENACE ! Drinking drivers are a far greater menace to safety on ' streets and highways than official records disclose, the Associa-j Associa-j tion of Casualty and Surety Companies declared today in call-j call-j ing for a concerted public demand that they be put "in the spotlight spot-light and on the spot" as one of the major causes of increased j fatalities and injuries in traffic accidents in recent years. p Uninhibited drinking drivers were linked directly to the big rise in deaths and injuries caused by speeding in 1950 and 1951, by Thomas N. Boate, public safety director of the Association Associa-tion of Casualty and Surety Companies. Mr. Boate declared that nearly half of the traffic fatalities and injuries at night and on week-ends were caused by drinkers who insisted on driving and stepped too heavily on the accelerator. A collision last November that orphaned 11 young children whose parents were killed when their car was struck by another automobile occupied by teenagers teen-agers who had been drinking, was cited by Mr. Boate as an example ex-ample of the multiple-death accidents ac-cidents that are frequently caused by drinkingand-driving. In an accident on Long Island a few weeks earlier, he said, five youths were instantly killed while traveling 80 to 100 miles an hour after leaving a drinking party, according to police. "Public opinion must back up enforcement of the law against drinking drivers and keep them off the roads to safeguard the lives of others riding with them, innocent people in otner cars, and pedestrians," Mr. Boate said. "It must also make it unfashionable un-fashionable to drive after drinking, drink-ing, if there is to be a real reduction re-duction in the accident toll. The dangerous custom of taking one more drink 'for the road' must be forced out of the driver's driv-er's language. It has become the toast to death for thousands of innocent victims every year, as well as for many of those who drink it so confidently. "If every driver knew how much even a few drinks blunt his driving ability and lessen his chances of getting home safely, and then acted on the logic of facts rather than on his false feeling of security after imbibing, he would always leave his car at home and travel some other way, rather than risk an accident after drinking. That is the sure way of avoiding accidents ac-cidents if one drinks." More than 6,000 drivers involved in-volved in fatal accidents in 1949 had been drinking, Mr. Boate said. In addition, 2,000 pedestrians pedes-trians met death in traffic while in an alcoholic haze. However, these official figures do not reflect re-flect fully the growing menace of drinking - and - driving accidents, acci-dents, he declared, or in one state alone last year 49 of fatal fa-tal rural accidents involved a drinking driver, and in 31 of accidents involving injuries the drivers had been drinking. |
