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Show v SPECTRES ON PARADE One reason why there is less appreciation than there should be of the horror of our annual automobile death toll is that the accidents happen far apart geographically, and at intervals throughout the entire year so that the total of a singie day in a single locality does not particularly disturb us. Again, few motorists, comparatively speaking, see an accident in which someone is killed or seriously injured. It would be Well for the. public to put its imagination to work on this situation. Here's one way to do it. Suppose that you, and all the millions of other car-owners, could be seated in a tremendous tre-mendous reviewing stand. Marching by slowly in front of you are the 35,000 shrouded spectres of persons who were killed by automobiles last year. To each shrouded figure is clinging one or more bereaved relatives. The parade would take many hours to pass a silent, marching line of lives that had been destroyed because be-cause some one was careless or reckless or incompetent. The very unpleasantness of that illustration is what makes it valuable. The fact that only an infinitesimal proportion of the 35,000 victims are killed in your community doesn't make any difference. Nor does the fact that only a comparatively few deaths occur on a given day. Remember that each year sees hundreds of tragedies as horrible as those of the Titanic or the Akron and they are all unnecessary. Think of the long, horrible parade. And then , decide what kind of a driver you vrtill strive to be in the future. o |