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Show ROUGH ROADS MEAN MUCH HIGHER TAX The average motorist seldom realizes, real-izes, probably, that every time he strikes a bump in the road It means additional expenditure for highway maintenance, lie knows that bumps and ridges in the highways mean greater wear for his automobile and a greater expense, consequently, in that direction, but very likely does not realize that these irregularities mean greater road depreciation, with the result that he must eventually pay more in taxes for the maintenance of highways. Such, however, is the case. This is because the impact caused when the motor vehicle is thrown suddenly in the air by the ridge and then dropped forcefully back to the road Is much greater than the normal impact of the vehicle wheels traveling over an even surfaced road. Tests made by the United States bureau of public roads have shown that this impact may go as high as seven times the static load on one rear wdieel when a selli-tired truck, traveling at 10 miles an hour, strikes a 1-inch obstruction. Pneumatic tires, of course, reduce this, but even so the impact is greater than on an even-surfaced road. The highways user can realize from this that rough, bumpy roads mean more expenditure for him than the mere added cost of repairs for his automobile au-tomobile ; it means that the roads will wear out much more rapidly and require re-quire him to pay more taxes to maintain main-tain them. It follows from this that the road without ridges and bumps is bound to be doubly economical to the motor vehicle user, first: because of the saving sav-ing of repairs on his automobile, and second : in the saving of taxes for road maintenanca Road building statistics for the United States in recent years demonstrate demon-strate that the public is demanding aven-surfaced paved roads to supplant the rough dirt roads that have made traveling costly and highways maintenance main-tenance much in excess of what it should be. Concrete highway paving statistics alone for 1023 prove this. Last year the United States built the equivalent of 5,1.34 miles of lS-foot concrete highway pavement, and a large mileage has been constructed already this year. |