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Show Banish Drunken Drivers Increasing fatalities on thla high-wieys high-wieys of the United States should cause every reader of The Pyramid to be interested in a statement cf David Beecroft, former preident of tho American Society of Automctive Engineers. He insists that "the driver driv-er and net mechanical failure is at this bottom of most acc'dlents" and oaks "what is th? uee of testing the machine and not the driver?" Moreover, at a meeting of the Amerioan Safety Congress, recently oeld in Louisville, Ky., se-v in volunteer volun-teer subjects were tested for reactions reac-tions after taking a single cocktail and the ability of each subj'ct was "slow d up." Obviously, if the mind of en automobile driver slows up when he ought to be putting on the brakes to meet an emergency some-th'ng some-th'ng is going to happen. This brings us the question "Is alcohol responsible for the rise in the d:iath rate on th" highways?" The al.iswere may not b conclusive but the evidence 19 fairly positive and the only uncertainty is what w? are going to do about it. How long will the public permit auto driving by drunks aPd near-drunks to be overlooked and winked at by law enforcement officials? One of th" features of th" meeting of thb Saftay Conference was a mock trial of ai fictitious person accured of "driving while drunk." He pleaded plead-ed not guilty but testified that he had only drunk "two bottles of beer." Dr. H. A. Heise, of Milwaukee, as an expert witness, testified that he had testa d the defendint at the police station and that, while the man talked clearly, there were symptoms of the use of alcohol in his walk and on his breath and that the tests showed 0.3 per cent of alcohol in hi" blood. A a qualified expert, he added thet 0.2 p'r cent could affect the reactions of an automobile driver. The jury of 123 delegates vcted 85-38 for conviction. |