Finally the driver-the remaining element in every highway situation-also is better than he used to be. That a great many drivers are reckless or clumsy is only too evident, but considering all of them, more than 70 million in number, I am convinced that the average level of skill and caution is improving. Indeed if it were not, our present crowded highways would be in a hopeless tangle. Improved driving is due, I believe, to continuous widespread education in the schools and through the press and other media of public information, and to more and better enforcement including driver-licensing.

Thus the ever-decreasing death rate is the result of no one cause but of many. It is the result of patient, unceasing effort by many thousands of devoted public servants-engineers, police, judges, teachers, administrators, publicists, and others in and out of Government. And back of these have been the national and local organizations dedicated in whole or in part to the cause of traffic safety.

To this cause the Federal Government has contributed not only through the great work done by the Bureau of Public Roads, the Interstate Commerce Commission's Bureau of Motor Carriers, and other agencies; it also has given overall leadership through a long series of national conferences. The first of these was sponsored by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1924 and thereafter. President Truman recognized the postwar traffic emergency by calling a President's Conference in 1946 and succeeding years. In these meetings all interested groups-official, business, civic, and othercame together to compare experiences, reconcile divergent views, and agree on what needed to be done. This agreement is expressed in the action program on which all present efforts are based.

The 81st Congress appropriated, in the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1950, "not to exceed $75,000" for furtherance of this program, and in 1952 the amount was increased to "not to exceed $150,000." Several of you, as members of the committee or of the House, had a part in this very helpful legislation.

President Eisenhower saw the clear need for a dramatic quickening of public interest to support the safety efforts of traffic officials and organizations. In February 1954, the White House Conference on Highway Safety brought together a brilliant galaxy of top leaders in business, agriculture, labor, information media and other groups who pledged support for organized traffic safety programs in every State and community, and they are making good on this pledge. The mileage death rate has continued to go down.

Yet this remarkable reduction in the rate has barely made up for the continuing increase in travel. After all, it is not rates but human beings that are killed and crippled, and (except during gas rationing) highway accidents have been killing between 30,000 and 40,000 a year for the past 22 years. Over 3 years ago the millionth death was recorded. If, as has been estimated, traffic volume increases by 50 percent in the next 10 years, accidents at the present rate will take 55,000 lives a year. We are on a treadmill, running faster and faster just to stay where we are.

Last year, 36,000 were thus killed, many more than the accidental deaths in all the homes of America, and more than twice the accidental deaths of people at work in factories, mines, construction, and all other gainful occupations combined. No wonder that when the aver

age citizen thinks of accidents or accident prevention he thinks of traffic.

One-quarter (9,000) of the deaths last year occurred in cities and towns over 2,500 population; three-quarters (27,000) were in rural areas including small towns under 2,500 people. The rural death rate was more than twice the urban. Thus the lion's share of the problem is on rural highways.

In addition to these deaths in traffic last year, a million and a quarter people were injured. Of these, over 100,000 suffered permanent disability such as loss of an arm, leg or eye, and many others spent weeks or months in hospital beds.

As pointed out in the President's message, the pain and suffering of all these victims and their families cannot be reckoned in dollars. Our own and other recognized statisticians have, however, computed the economic costs of certain measurable items as follows (chart II): Wage loss:

On account of temporary disability--

From reduced earning power because of permanent dis-
abilities---

Estimated net value of future earnings of those killed__.
Making a total wage loss of__.

Medical and hospital expense_.

Property damage__.

Administrative cost of insurance (insurance claims paid are

already included above)---.

$150, 000, 000

350, 000, 000 750, 000, 000

1,250, 000, 000 100, 000, 000 1, 600, 000, 000

1, 400, 000, 000

The total of these items for 1954 was $4,350,000,000, which even in these times and in this capital city is a lot of money.

The national traffic toll in lives and money is simply the summation of the losses in the several States. The map, chart III, shows the 1954 deaths and mileage death rate in each State. If you want a rough estimate of the dollar cost in your State or city, just multiply the number of deaths by $120,000.

You will note that some States had rates only about half of the national average. In general, these are the places that started earliest and have been the most vigorous in their safety programs. If all would do as well-and believe me, gentlemen, there is no good reason why they cannot-we would save this year some 18,000 lives, over half a million injuries, and two billions in hard cash.

The States and cities that have already made the best safety records are the first to say that they can and will do still better, through research, sharpened techniques, stronger official and public support.

Clearly, accidents are caused and accidents can be prevented, because they have been prevented. Any notion that they are "acts of God" or the "inevitable price of progress" is sheer nonsense.

A vital part of the preventive program is to carry forward the building of safety into our highways, just as we increasingly build safety into factories and their equipment, into school and other buildings, into motor cars, into household appliances and so on-in short, into the entire physical environment in which we live. In the long run this is actually the cheapest way to prevent accidents because a highway, a machine or a building with safety built in will stay that way for many years, whereas the other approaches through education and enforcement, necessary as they are, must be repeated year after

year.

With safety built in, the driver has less to worry about. Thus, a highway which is built to be safe proves also to be more efficient.

Let me illustrate how we can build safety into highways. If the roadway is divided, with an adequate medial strip, head-on collisions are virtually eliminated and headlight glare is no serious problem. If shoulders are wide and firm, "running off roadway" accidents are reduced. If no pedestrian can get on the highway, no pedestrian can be hit-and so on.

At the dawn of the motor age we had to be content with a highway on which it was possible, with skill and patience, to reach our destination without an accident. Now the public demands highways on which it shall be as difficult as possible to have an accident.

What we all want is an adequate, efficient highway transportation system by which persons and goods can move from point A to point B, quickly, comfortably, economically, and in one piece. Anything that interferes with such movement, whether it be an accident, congestion, or other delay is a symptom of inefficiency in the system.

The elements that make up the highway transportation system are roads, vehicles, drivers and sometimes pedestrians. When the road, the vehicle, the driver or pedestrian misbehaves, to that extent the system breaks down. A single accident may involve all of these elements, as when a driver in a hurry goes too fast, with brakes out of adjustment, on a slippery road, skids and hits the side of a narrow bridge or perhaps hits a pedestrian who stepped onto the roadway without looking.

If any one of these three elements had been lacking if the road had been wider or less slippery, if the brakes had been in good condition, if the driver or pedestrian had been more careful-the accident would not have occurred. Back in 1938 a research report made for and published by the Bureau of Public Roads declared that:

* by far the majority (of the accidents studied) were the result of a combination of causes, the elimination of any one of which would have prevented the accident.

Thus, we do not try to ascribe each accident to a single cause or to say that a certain number or percentage of accidents are "caused" by bad roads, bad cars, or bad drivers or pedestrians because the causes are interrelated and overlapping. Instead, we try to record and study all the circumstances of each accident and to remedy not one but all of them. Thus, we know that a highway built to safe specifications will make some types of accidents much less likely, will make it a lot easier to drive safely.

No highway, however, can be foolproof. Sometimes a superhighway has had a bad accident record because of the delusion that there was no need for a speed limit or for policing. When, on the other hand, the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other turnpikes have added good policing to safe design, the result has been a death rate about half the national average.

We need, on all highways, control of the driver through good police and court work and good driver-licensing. We need to develop skill and self-control, through driver-training in high school and through continuous public education. But education is a slow process. We must design and build highways to be as safe as possible for drivers as they are.

When, as in recent years, the building of safety into highways has lagged far behind the travel volume, the burden of keeping the traffic moving, and moving safely, has fallen on the enforcers and educators. The traffic engineers have done their best, through signs, signals, oneway streets and the like, to extract the last ounce of safe capacity out of existing roads and streets. These approaches will always be necessary but if we depend on them alone for further reduction of the annual toll, or even to keep it at the present level with constantly increasing traffic, these efforts will be more and more costly and less and less productive of results.

The highways, in short, must also do their part. The Bureau of Public Roads and the State highway departments, by and large, have done their best with available resources. Our plea today is that in the further development of the national highway program the aim be not merely more roads but better, safer roads, as an indispensable element in a truly efficient highway transportation system.

(The charts referred to in Mr. Williams' statement are as follows:)