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00cUMEN T8
ROOM
No. 4--1742
THE
WORKS
PROGRAM
---------------
--Works Progress Ad.ministration-SUl{DAY COPY
The following material is suggested
for use in Sunday feature supplements .
A selection of photographs is available
from the Press Section, Rm . 216, WalkerJohnson Building. See list of captions
on last page.
For Rel ease to Newspapers,
Sunday , August 21, 1938, and thereaf t er.
WPA AilJS l'iL"..'l'ION 1 S DRIVE FOR SAFER HIGHWAYS
Thirty-five hundred peopl e are alive and presumably happy today
who, by all statistical standards, should be dead.
They were condemned
by the usually unimpeachable dictum of a sinister r ed line that snakes
across one of the master charts of the National Safety Council--one that
r ecords the tragic waste of life in highwa~· accidents .
Last year 39,500 people met sudden death on the highway.
the greates t accident record in his to ry.
It was
The toll was four-fifths as
great as the American losses in the ~orld War .
It was comparabl e to wiping
out t he entire population of a city the size of Waltham, Massachusetts, or
Santa Monica, California.
With such factors as an increase in the number of vehicle miles
favoring a continua.nee of the slaughter this year, the charts predicted
t ha t l\:1other 17,000 would be killed by the end of June.
But when the
grim statistics were talli ed it was found that the actu.e.l number of deaths
was some 20 per cent less than expectations .
Somewhere along the line
Death wns cheated of nearly 3,500 of its victims--a sheer dividend for .
the human race, which, it now appears, may be devel9ping into a trend .
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If it is indeed a trenrl.; if the pr0blem of safety on the highways
of America .is finally yieldin6 t o tr eatment, much of t he credit therefor
can be laid t o the constant harrm1ering of the formula,
11
E.E.E. 11 int ,J the
consci ousness of the .°'-roe rican public .
11
'E ,E . E.
11
stands for En6 ineering, Education , Enforcen;ent.
It is th e
working slogan of such organizations as the Nat i onal Safety Council, the
Ame rican Automobile Ass ocio.tion and countless stat 0 and municipal polic0
bodies all over the country .
Its meaning, in simple terms, is tha t , first ,
stree ts, r oads and driving aids must be made adequate for the traffic burden
they bear; that drivers and p<?!des tri ans must be awakened to the need for
good safety practices , and , las tly, that strict po lice enforcement must
bolster and :9l'Ot ect the gains on th8 engineering and. educat i onal fronts .
But it has been a n uphill fi ght .
Neither enginee ring , education nor
enforcement h,3.s kept pace with the tr emendous growth i ".'. t he 1:,se of 1:mtomobil cs
in the last ten yean;.
The m1mb ~r of d.eatlis ir,:.'! reasr,rl 53 pe r c,,nt 'J e twee n 1921
and 1937 and. the dollar loss c.uring t hc1 decade i s r eckone1i in t he billions .
Part of the trouble, at l east, expe rts agree , has b0en due t o t he fact t l1at
t he traffic probl em is a compare.ti voly nev, phenomeno n .
Techniques for dealing
with it have had to ·oe evo lved at a painfully slow pace , and tp.e development
of those t echniq_ues has be en a costly -process which f ew communiti es have b een
able to afford indepcndontly .
Definition of a p robl em is the f irst step to s olution .
The Works
Pro gress Admi nj_s trn.tion has done a s much as any c.gency in the cou.'1.try in
discovering who,t makes a traffic probl em.
I n the last t hree ;-yrears it has
authorized ex::renditures aggregating app roximo.tely $12,750,000 for traffic
studies and surveys in 155 communities .
In a majority of cases they were
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the f i rst such studiAs eve r made , and where the findin 6 s and recommendations
were a1roJ.ie,1. , reduced acc i dent rates have followed almos t universally .
The. c:i.ty of Columbus , Ohio, is a cas e in :oo i nt.
When it pass ed it s
for ti eth cons ecutive day l ate in July wi t hout a singl e traffic death , the
fact nado front page news in cit i es as far away as Washington.
The r eason
was tha t Columbus , for wha t eve r else it might be famous , was also not ed
for the l e t hal qUA.li t y of its aut omobil e t:i.'affi c .
I ts fatality rate of
31 pr~:·· 100 , 000 of populat i on during 1937 was the highest of a grmfp of
23 cities of comparable s iz e throughout t he nation .
had exis t ed for yf:ars.
Sporad.ic "safe drivj_ng 11 and
had. had. oEl y temporary effec t s .
The same s ituat i on
11
s ave a life" compaigns
Stringent d riving l aws we r e invoked .
New t:c r:i.ffic lights and stop s i i;;ns we re scat t e r ed fr eely aoou t the city .
Newspo,pers o.eplo r ed tr,e s i tu.at i on i n their edit orial pages .
And still
i nc r eas i ne:~ numbe r s of Columbus ci tivms were mowed down in the stre ets
month aft er mon t h .
Naturally, then, a s ix weeks armistice was not or.ly an occasi on f or
public r e joic i ng but
a,
pr e tty clear indica tion that some t hing fundamental
ha d. happened t o Columbus I traffic situation .
What happe!ied was that, early in 1 936 , the city sponsored a $68,000
WPA 9r o j ec t fo r an exhaustive stud.y of the loca l traffic -prob l em.
Unde r
the supe r vis ion of a membe r of t he city engineering sta ff, 120 white-collar
workers--en('.;i neers, draftsmen, tabul a tors and cl e ri cal hel p--we r e t aken
from local r el i ef r olls , thoroughly coache~ i n the ir r espective duti es ,
and put to wo rk probing the most minute activiti e s of ~olumbus drive rs and
pedest ri ans .
Profe ssor
Roge r L. Morris on of the Highwc.y Engineeri ng
Trans::io rt Department of the Uni ve::.· s i ty of Michigan was r e tained by the c ity
as consultant .
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Ten months lat e r, from y iles of 3tatistics, tables and spot maps ,
Professor Mor rison comp il ed his recommendations to the city gove rnment .
He was able to show which streets bore the heaviest traffic loads and
at wi1ich hours ; where most ace id.en ts occurred, and why ; where street
lighting was inadequate for night driving and liow it shoulci be impro ved.;
which streets should be designated om:.-way and where parking restricti ons
were necess:=i.ry .
:Se sug:_:;es ted certain changes in the trc:,ffic code ; the
aboli ti0n of us e l ess ordinances and. the ene,ctment of others, and offered
specific suggestions for improv in6 enforcement .
average cLrivers ho r e corrunend.e c1 the r emoval of
wh i ch , he said. , were,
11 undonbt
To th e d.oli 6 ht of many
11 supe rfluous
traffic lights 11
cdly a contributing co.US"l of many accide nts .
11
Backed. by an aroused public op inion , the cit~, followed. the rec ommendations closely .
A tra:fi0 e21gineering depactment was set u-p as a permanent
part of the c i ty govermnent ancl the po lice traffic pat:rol was increased
from 50 to 70 officers .
Other recomrnenclatio!'ls :r:-egard.ing t raffic and. driving
r e 6--ulations were -;mt in force .
In ac1di tion to the aus'1icious result noted.
above--40 consecutive death-free days--citizens of Columbus now p rid efully
point to tri~ fact th~t fatal iti es during the first s even months of thi s
year are l es s than half the m.w.ber for th8 su.me :re ri.od in 1937 .
.Non-fata;J,
accid e nts have b een reduced from 1 , 189 to 683 and. :prope rty damage has been
reduc e d in t:imilar proportion.
Colmn-b'lS believc::s it is
8n
becoming a model of ir:t e lligent traffic c on tr o l rather th2.n
the way t o
r-i.
11
!1o rrid
exRmple 11 of its absence .
Such exam-ples ca.7, be du.plicated many times over in the fil es of
the Traffic Engineer of the W?A in Wnshj.ngton.
Of the 155 citiris 'Vhich
hnve sponsored surveys man~r have seen the r esults reflect ed in .mC1.terin.l
decrer.ses in deaths cmd proper ty dru:iage .
Others have overhauled the ir
traffic codes , tightened e nfo rc ,3me:1t, and ndopted effective traffic
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r H01lat i o~s for t he f ir s t time in their civic exi s t ence,
New Yor k Ci ty
won the National Safety Council award in 1936 l ar bely as a r esult of the
mos t fctr-r eaching traffic survey ever conducted in it s history--a W'PA
pr oj ect .
Many s tatev;i de surveys have been conducted in cooper c.. tion \7i th
the Bureau of Puolic Roads for the promotion of safe drivi ng on main
hi g11ways .
Co oper a tive agr e0men ts of this t ype e.r e now in forc e in
24 stat es .
WPA has been similarly active in tho strictly engine ering phase of
the n:s . E. E. 11 progTam .
It is not easy to pick out of the staggering total s
of mil es of hi ghways constrt1c:t ed or r epair ed , the numbers of bri dge s ,
culvert s , roads i cle pat hs an d other a"9pur tenanc es to the nati on! s hi ghway
sy s tem , jus t what proportion of each has contribut ed directly to saf e ty.
Engi ne er s 2.ver, howeve r, tha t in the sum total of this work t he cause
of hi ghway saf e ty has been :.1ea. surably advanced .
Up to approxiriiately a year ago , for exanpl e , WPA worker s had built
46 , 650 miles of new roadways and repair ed and improved 158,694 .
In
instan ce s too numerous to mention this involved the pos itive elimination
of such dr iving hazarus a s S-curves and hairp in bends , steep grades ,
obstruc tions to cl ear vi s ion such as overhanging banks and clust ers of
underbrush and t r ees .
Much of the i mproved mileage , incidentally , included
widening , which is def ini tely rela t ed to safe ty.
More t han 20 , 000 miles
of road should.er s we re i mpr oved in adcl.i ti on to the above .
~-~inete en thousand new bridges have b een built by WPA and more than
18 , 000 r epaired .
Her e , also , is a definit e cont ribut i on to safe ty for
in almo s t ev er y case the new or improved structur e s wor e made nec es sary
by tho inadequacy of the forme r ones .
And of unquestione d safe ty value
ar e tho more than 1,000 mil es of guard rails which pr ot e ct the unwary
against running off curves or over s t eep embankments .
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One of th e unhappy paradox0.s wi th wh i ch the :::-.afety enrilw e r ha.s
to cope, however, is that th e fin est eng inE-e ring achievements come to
naught if d rivers and podec trians do no t l".llow how to use them.
Eve ry
Sunday motorist has se en ivrecks p il ed. u p a l ongs i de perfec tly strai ~ht
stretches of 40- foot supe1~highways; has shaken his heacl sadly , and
wor.dered how any one could come a c:-oppe r on such see::-iingly fool-proof ro ads ,
The answer usually is poor driving :· e ithe r inc1.b il i ty p rope rly to handle
a car, ignorance of Raf e driving practicer:; , or a calloi;.s d.isregard for
the safety of self and others ,
The reraedy i s the middle
11 E 11
of the
saf e ty for~ula- - Education .
Ge,ry , Indiana , hr,s d ev elope d a novel ::neans of forcin g safety
education on thos e who clo not take to it willingly .
school to which viol a tors are
11
It has a traffic
sentencec., 11 in add ition to th e f::.n es
and costs assecsed. for th e ir violati ons ,
'Th e "t e rm" l a sts for t e n we eks ,
embraces a compr ehensive r e view of the traffic situation in Gary,
i J\1pl ement ed with a display of realist i c photographs of accident s and
acc i dent victims , study of tho traff i c code , and o.ctu3l d.ri vir..g jnstructi on .
Violntors SLmt enced to the s chool may b e cit ed for c ont s;m:pt
of court if they fail to att end , and if they do :wt ma}::e a g::·adG of 75
on the ir final exrunination , they mu:3t go ove r the ground again ,
Of mor e than 500 violators who att end ed the school during its first
s i x months , accord i ng to HRrold A. Brow~ , safety d i ~e ctor for the Gary
police departme nt , t:ier e was no t a s ingl e r epei:-,t e r.
And Gnry 1 s r_,,cd.deri.t
r ecord has improved accordingly.
The Gar y traffic school is e, p roj e ct of th e WPA Adult Educati on
Division .
Its counterpart may b e f o"tJLd. in many ot he1· cities \?h e r e there
i s n s e rious det e rminc, ti on to imp1·ovo traffic c o~1di t i ons .
S .1ch schools
1
u sually are set up, s it~er on a municipal or statewide hasis , in coop e ration
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with police or safety departm ents .
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Q,uarter s , instruction material,
and sup ervision are furnished by th e Si, on s or s , uhile teachers are
carefully chosen from 'H"PA education p roj ects .
Instructi on cours e s
usually are modeled aft e r those offe r ea_ by the Ame rican Automobil e
Associati on , and this a g ency, a s well as the National Safety Council ,
frequently coop e rat e s clo sely with the p roj e cts .
In most localiti e s
there is an e nthus i astic public support for the traffic schools , and
not i nfrequent l y civic clubs have contribut ed one or mor e s e cond-hand
automobiles for actual driving instruction .
Pennsylvan i a has taken to the scheme with avi dity .
Twelve schools
are already in op eration and plans call for at le a st 60 -by the end of
the year .
already has
The one at Darby has beon in op e rati on for two y e ars and
11 graduated 11
mor e than 600 dr i v e rs .
The schools rec ently
have b ee n int egrn.ted with a st a t ewide saf e ty crunpn.i gn s ponsor e a Oj,'
th e St n te Motor Police Co;:unissionc: r , Pho exp ect s the r esult t o -oe
the saving of 1 , 000 live s this ycnr on Pe nnsy'lva nfa. hi ghw8y s .
When the traffic school in Philad.e l p hin was open ed i n May , a
columnist in one of the evenin g pape rs obs e rved :
"Many t h ought
w)1en
the f irst experimental classes were op ene d. that the enrollment wo·u.ld
be insufficient to make t he instruction worthwhil e , but instead the
demand has be en such tha,t in some p lac e s enrollment is b e ing booked
for weeks ahead . 11
Rec ently plans we r e a.rmom1c ed for the construction of a $42 , 000
dr iving range as a WPA p roj e ct in :?hilade lphia to be us e d. as a facil ity
of the tra ffic s chool .
T~1e Unit ed Stat e s has p a id de arly for its soubrique t,
on whe els . 11
11
a nation
It s most r e c ent bill , in 1937, according to th o i'b .tional
SafE.ty Council, WE',,S 39,600 d e E', t!ls, 1,360,000 p e rsonal injuri e s, a nd an
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e c onomic l oss es timat ed a t $1 , 700 , 000 ,000 .
Appar en tly the Americ an
public i s unwilling to sacr ifice tho pl easur e and utili t y of the
automobile t o es c ape the penalties i nvo lved .
Hc!lcc , some measures
a r o i ndica t e d whereby vrn can have our cake c:md eat it t oo , without
t oo se rious c o;_1s e q_u0nc os to our heal th and he..ppinec; s .
Tho way to t ha t
comp r omi so lies 1mq_ues tionably in the con ti nued app lic a tion of tho
formula .
11 E.
And i n thn t e;pplicc,ti on , c ertainly as f a r ns e nginee ring and
educa ti on c,.ro c onc r-1rnod , the \'TPA has taken a l eading par t •
•
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HI Gh"WAY SA.FE'rY
The f oll owing phot'Jgre,phs are avail 2ble without
cost . Please order by nu.i~ber from the Press Section.
6008- C
Congested inter se ction at 51st . St . and Sout h Parkway , Chicago ,
after improvement by WPA . T}1is formerly was one of the most
h.azardous traffic spots in the city
1683-0)
1684- 0)
]efnre and aft e r view s of the inters ect i on at 57th . St . and
Leif Erickson Drive , Chicago , showing the chanF,es .made oy WPA
to relieve a particul1:irly bacl traffic ha?.ard .
12585-C
. Typical road i ;nprovement made by
in Wisconsin .
WPA woJ:'k e rs . Th is scene is
12583- C
A score of people we r e killod and many others injur ed at
Pelky 1 s Curve , on Route 213 , near Bellaire , 0i1i o , because of
the poor visibility . WPA workmen have improved the s po t as
here shown by the remnval of a building and cutting back the
bank .
16479- C
This "bridge on a main highway out of Amarillo , Texas , was
widen ed from 20 to 40 feet oy WPA workmen as a sa:.::'ot;T moasure .
16481-C
The principal highway between Huntington and Bluefield.,
Va .,
formerly cross ed t h e □ain line of th e N~rfnlk ~n~ Wn~t •rn H~ilr uact. at tLe spot where tl1e ph o t ographer who tJnk thi s t, ict,ire
stood - - 50 feet from the mouth of the t1mnnl. A ser "i ~;, u, traf£'ic
hazard has been remove d. thr o~gh the construGti on ,:; f t :-io ov•.) r pass
shown above , a WPA p r ojec t .
16480- C
Part of a safe clri ving campaign cond.uct nd by th8 WPA in Tacoma ,
Washingtori .
16482- 0
Commissioner Percy W. FJote of the Pennsylvnnio, Motor Police
takes one of the sa.fe driving tests nrovid.ecl. by the '.'iPA Traffic
Scho ol in Fhilad.elphfr.• (Phot o by courtesy of Phi.lad.Glphia
Inquirer ).
1 5816- D
A WPA worker te sts a 11 student 11 drivcr 1 s reacti on time in the
'l'raffic Sch::iol a't Seattle , Washington .
1855- 0
Trucks b eing checked oy WPA safety W)rkers for we ig!:lt , breaking
time , etc ., on the streets uf Evansville , Indiana .
w.
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Part of t he safe driving cam9aiQ1 conducted by ?{PA in N: rth Ca1·0l ina consist in explaining traffic rul es t o drivers . It is est i mated that there a re over 3 , 000 driv~rs in the s tate who can
Y'.ei ther r ead nor wr i t o and. hence can:10t int er pr e t r oad.s i de r; i gns .
WPA wo:cki, rs pa int saf e ty zones and trnffic J Bnos nn the s tr ee t s
of Omaha .
9407 - C
Gur1.rd raiJ.s n.nd pai n t od traffic l':me s aro an impo rtan t adjunct
to safe driving in mountainous c cuntry . The scene above is
typical of work done 'by the WPA to promo te highway safe t y in
All egheny Cou.r:. ty , Ponn r;ylvania.
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