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Show "DEATH AFTER DARK." "Of ::i;,U00 Imotor fatalities last year, 20,000 occurred at night," writes Governor Harold C. Hoffman of New Jersey, in an article in Liberty Li-berty entitled "Death After Dark." "The total economic waste of night-time automobile accidents is estimated at nearly one and a half billion dollars. . . "Sixty-nine per cent of those killed kill-ed are pedestrians. . . . "As a nation, we have failed to grasp the fact that as the sun goes down, so must our speed. We are simply driving too fast for our eyes." Night driving, Governor Hoffman points out, involves three definite factors, each of which contributes to the hazard: 1. Overdriving our headlights; head-lights; 2, Slow perception due to poor illumination; 3, The night pedestrian pe-destrian hazard. The first factor is probably the most important, in as much as it affects the other two. Governor Hoffman says that the average av-erage man is fortunate if he can see 100 feet clearly with his headlamps. That is less than the distance required requir-ed to stop from a speed of 35 miles per hour, on good pavement with first-class tires and brakes. If the night driver is traveling at CO, not an uncommon speed on our highways today, that 100 feet of visibility will have passed by the time he is able to even substantially lower his speed. Thousands of us are driving 50 ! and GO miles an hour in cars equipped equip-ped with 30-mile headlights. One solution to that is better illumination illumina-tion for streets and highways irrefutable ir-refutable figures, based on extensive tests, show that the saving in economic eco-nomic waste, to say nothing of the human waste, pays the cost of good lighting many times over. But it will be a long time before the average highway is lighted at all and in the meantime, the only solution is to dri e moderately if you wish to avoid "death after dark." |
