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Show Man, Not Machine, Chief Cause of Traffic Deaths V' 'ffiM APPARENTLY GOOD COMDITIOM , In the majority of automobile , accidents throughout the country during the past year the driver and not the car was at fault, ac- cording to research experts of The Travelers Insurance Company. Com-pany. They estimated that 93 per kcent of all automobiles involved ; In fatal crashes in 1939 and 95.5 per cent of those in non-fatal I accidents were in good mechani- cal condition. tj 37,000 cars dealing out , ; death, only 670 were found to . (have defective brakes and 510 had faulty lights. A puncture or blowout was reported as the primary pri-mary cause of accident in but i40 cases. While it stressed man-failure .! rather than machine-failure as j the chief cause of accidents, the J report was careful not to mini-,rruze mini-,rruze the importance of keeping I vehicles in good condition. V "It is known that many acd-: acd-: dents attributed to some failure r f. 'TKSP"7sol I kts j on the part of the driver would be averted if the car were in perfect per-fect or near-perfect condition," the report stated. "As an exam- 1 pie, an investigating officer writes ' into his report as the cause of an accident: 'Operator drove off the roadway.' The driver may have been inattentive; however, is it not possible that with perfect brakes, perfect steering mechanism, mech-anism, and good tires he could still have pulled himself out of the hole into which his inatten-tiveness inatten-tiveness placed him?" 1 In other words, the report concludes, con-cludes, mechanical failure is often cited as a contributing cause but not the principal cause of accidents. acci-dents. . 1 I |