ducers in the continental United States were asked to estimate their capacity as of the end of 1954 and 1956 based on present expansion plans, and as of the end of 1959 "*** assuming that the proposed $50 billion 10-year highway program is enacted by Congress in 1955, and assuming that new construction and maintenance and repair, other than highway construction resulting from the $50 billion highway program, will remain at about the current level * From this canvass the following national totals were compiled: 1954 1959 Barrels per year 290, 753, 000 338, 584, 000 407, 237, 000 The estimated capacity of the portland cement industry in the continental United States as of December 31, 1953, was 287,498,330 barrels. 1 Includes revisions for July, August, and September. * Includes revisions for July, August, September, and October. Source: Mineral Industry Surveys, U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Monthly Cement Report No. CP 402. (Thereupon, at 4:18 p. m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a. m., Friday, April 1, 1955.) NATIONAL HIGHWAY PROGRAM FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 1955 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ROADS, The subcommittee met at 10:12 a. m., in room 412, Senate Office Building, Senator Albert Gore (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Gore and McNamara. Senator GORE. The first witness is Mr. Sidney J. Williams, representing the National Safety Council. STATEMENT OF SIDNEY J. WILLIAMS, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, in line with your request I will present a very brief summary of this paper, hoping that the full paper may appear in the record. I am Sidney J. Williams. I am assistant to the president of the National Safety Council, a nonprofit association on which the Congress has bestowed a Federal charter. For more than half of my 36 years on the council's staff, I have been in charge of our work relating to accident prevention on streets and highways, and am presently serving as acting manager of our traffic and transportation department. I appear here today at your invitation, not to speak for or against any particular measure, but as an "expert witness" on the safe use of the highway system-that is, on the extent, causes, and prevention of motor vehicle traffic accidents and how this relates to a National Highway Program. President Eisenhower in his message on this subject referred to such accidents as the first of four basic considerations. Let us look at the general picture. In 1924, highway traffic deaths in the United States passed the 19,000 mark. In December of that year, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover called together the First National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. In this and subsequent meetings all the interested agencies, official, business, and civic, first began to work together. One outcome of these Hoover conferences was the joint effort for uniform traffic laws and ordinances which has brought notable though still incomplete results. The chart shows how rapidly traffic was increasing and with it the opportunity for accidents. In 1941, deaths reached a peak of nearly 40,000. Then wartime gas rationing sharply cut both travel mileage and deaths. We wondered anxiously what would happen when war's end brought release of the pent-up urge to go places. Would the death curve take another jump? In 1946 and succeeding years, on invitation of President Truman, all the interested groups again met in the President's Highway Safety Conference. Through months of committee work the action program was hammered out as a joint statement of the various approaches and measures needed to meet the challenge. These measures, applied more and more generally throughout the Nation, did check the accident rise we had feared, but not quite fast enough to offset the constantly growing number of drivers, cars, and miles traveled. The death toll began to creep up again. December 1951-the tenth anniversary of Pearl Harbor-witnessed our millionth traffic death. Some 3,300 of our men had died at Pearl Harbor. In that same month, and in every "normal" December, more than 3,300 of our people die in traffic in our "safe" homeland. The traffic toll to date is twice the total of battle deaths in all our wars. There was clear need for a dramatic quickening of public interest to support the safety efforts of traffic officials and organizations. President Eisenhower recognized this need and in February 1954, the White House Conference on Highway Safety convened here in Washington. A brilliant galaxy of top leaders in business, agriculture, labor, information media, and other groups pledged support for organized traffic safety programs in every State and community, and they are making good on this pledge. There were 2,000 fewer deaths in 1954 than in 1953. Now let us look at a very significant figure, the mileage death rate, or deaths per hundred million vehicle-miles traveled. In 1925, when mileage data were first available, this rate was 18. In 1938 it was down to 12, in 1953 to 7, and last year, 1954, to 6.5. Yet this remarkable reduction of 64 percent 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. 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, 36,300 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 average 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 (27,300) 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: Wage loss: On account of temporary disability.. From reduced earning power because of permanent disabilities____ Estimated net value of future earnings of those killed-- Making a total wage loss of-- Medical and hospital expense-- Property damage_. Overhead 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 million which even in these times and in this Capital City is a lot of money. Can we save it? Some people still cling to the idea that a traffic accident is an act of God, or the devil, to be met with Christian fortitude and a good sound insurance policy. Many people vaguely assume that the costs I have recited are the price of progress, a regrettable but unavoidable byproduct of the modern highway transportation which we so greatly enjoy. Any such notion is sheer nonsense. The decrease of 64 percent in the mileage death rate, already mentioned, did not just happen. There is a reason why 36,300 people were killed last year, rather than the 100,000 who would have been killed at the 1925 rate. The reason lies in the patient, unceasing efforts of many thousands of devoted public servants-engineers, police, judges, teachers, administrators, and others in and out of government. Furthermore, several States and cities repeatedly show traffic death rates only about half of the national average. It is no accident that 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 can't-we would save this year some 18,000 lives, over half a million injuries, and $2 billion in hard cash. These 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 then, accidents are caused and accidents can be prevented, because they have been prevented. There is no one cause and no one cure. Success comes from no panacea but from a broad balanced program of attack on all fronts. The elements of this program have been agreed upon by all workers in this field and are set forth in the action program already mentioned, which was adopted by the President's Highway Safety Conferences of 1946 and 1949 and reaffirmed by the White House Conference on Highway Safety in 1954. A vital part of this program is to build safety into our highways, just as we increasingly build safety into factories and their equipment, into school and other buildings, into motorcars, 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 |