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Show Give The Kids a Chance Every parent whose child rides a bike will want to take a long look at the statistics on bicycle accidents recently totaled up by traffic authorities. Unless something is done about it, the coming year will again see more than 25,000 bicyclists - most of them children killed or in-lured in-lured in street and highway accidents. t Ever since the coming of automobiles, bicycles have been tolerated somewhat grudgingly as hybrids in the vehicle family - a sort of cross between a pedestrian and a motor vehicle - with neither willing to accept them. Pedestrians Pe-destrians don't want them on the sidewalks; motorists call them a nuisance and a danger on the streets. Where there are no proper regulations for their operations, cyclists cy-clists ride to the right, to the left, through red lights, in and out between moving cars, and sometimes even travel afoot beside their bikes in crowded traffic. Such a state of affairs is hair-raisingly dangerous. It Is unfair to cyclists, motorists and pedestrians alike; for accidents are often caused by cyclists even though the bicycle itself may not be hit in the crash. But perhaps the worst damage of all is to character. Young people are encouraged en-couraged in habits of recklessness and lack of respect for traffic laws, and this is the worst possible preparation for them as future citizens and car-owners. Cure for this situation would seem to lie not in outlawing outlaw-ing bicycles, but in giving them a respectable place in the traffic family. Every community should welcome a constructive con-structive program providing for enforcement of such traffic traf-fic regulations as apply to bicycles and for their registration, regis-tration, licensing and inspection. Let's give the kids a chance. WHY A SUPER HIGHWAY? We fail to see why the people of Utah should be so enthused en-thused about the possibility of the construction of a super highway through the state. It seems to us that such a step would do much more to retard the growth of the state, particularly the southern part, than it could possibly pos-sibly do to help build it up. Such a highway would have a tendency to route traffic traf-fic from one large city to another with very few stops in between. It would shorten the traveling distance between be-tween such points, and would undoubtedly mean that travel tra-vel would go directly from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, with the towns in between benefiting in no way. It seems to us that the people of Southern Utah should forget about a super highway, and do everything possible possi-ble to have the state develop a system of safe three or four lane highways, and thus have good roads for intercommunity inter-community travel, and general transportation purposes within the state, and at the same time let the entire state benefit to some extent from out of state travel. |