Motor Vehicle Death Rate So High Because Many Drivers Are Unfit, Say Editors, July 3, 1926

Must Know Something of the Driver

Each year sees an increase in the number of auto accidents and fatalities in the United States.

There were 22,500 fatal motor vehicle accidents in the United States last year, this being an increase of 2,200 over the year before.

In 1924 the motor vehicle death rate per 100,000 increased five peer cent over 1923 and in 1925 the increase over 1924 was 10 per cent.

Deaths of children under 15 years, in motor vehicle accidents increased from 6,090 in 1925 to 6,300 in 1925. Deaths of children under 16 struck by motor vehicles increased 3 ½ per cent, while the fatalities among the adults jumped 15 per cent.

One of the reasons, unquestionably, for this steadily mounting death toll of the automobiles is the unfitness of the 20 million drivers of whom, The Winston-Salem Journal guesses, that not more than 1 out of every 4 is temperamentally equipped to handle cars.

The Journal’s discussion of this phase of the issue is pertinent and wise.

“A street car motorman is subjected to certain tests and requirements that many a motorist, sometimes only half sane, sometimes only half sober, often incapacitated by serious mental and physical defects is accorded warrant to roam at will over the country, his sole test for fitness residing in the fact that he knows the right side of the road from the left.

“There is something about the wheel of a motor car that imparts an exaggerated sense of power and some of us, unfortunately, are not geared as exquisitely as the machine we manipulate.

“Surely the time has come when we should begin to be more careful about who is permitted to drive automobiles. Remember the 22,500 men, women and children killed by automobiles last year and you will find yourself seconding why a Nation that calls itself civilized does not brush aside all other considerations and bend its energies toward the work of minimizing the menace of the motor.”

Chairman Frank Page of the Highway Commission is one of the men taking a leading part in the movement to get some law regulating the issuance of drivers’ permits. In the State now the man with the auto has to stand no sort of test, and it is a fact, of course, that many of those given licenses for cars are not fit to drive them. Other States have tried this plan and it works for them. We must do something in North Carolina and in every other state for that matter.

From the editorial page of The Concord Daily Tribune, July 3, 1926. J.B. Sherrill, Editor and Publisher; W.M. Sherrill, Associate Editor.

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-07-03/ed-1/seq-4/