Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/136

"The need for corrective measures in these directions is definitely recognized and will be cared for as rapidly as available funds will permit. But this alone does not give assurance of a complete solution of our highway-accident problem, since it must be recognized that such accidents are due, in large measure, not to faults in the highways, but to weaknesses of the drivers of vehicles."

Congress response to the highway accident problem was to provide increased appropriations for highways, and particularly for the elimination of grade crossings and other hazards to highway traffic. A considerable part of the $400 million granted to the States under the National Industrial Recovery Act and the additional $200 million of emergency grants under the Hayden-Cartwright Act went into safety improvements. Congress provided another $200 million for a major attack on grade crossing hazards in the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, and a further $190 million in the regular Federal-aid authorizations for fiscal years 1938 through 1943. All of these funds were outright grants and did not have to be matched by the States.

This huge safety program reached its peak in fiscal years 1937 and 1938 when the States eliminated over 1,800 grade crossings and reconstructed over 300 existing grade separation structures at crossings. In addition, this program provided for the installation of train-activated protective devices at grade crossings with a high of nearly 1,200 devices installed in 1940.

However, the grade crossing campaign had its critics who claimed that far too much money was being spent to solve a very small part of the total problem.

Before World War I, most States were using signs to warn road users of danger ahead, particularly railroad crossings, and the railroads themselves were required to post warning signs at all public road crossings. Most States agreed that danger signs “should be conspicuous and easily and quickly read, and therefore concise; should specify the character of danger to be guarded against and should be located at such distance from the danger point as to give ample time to be acted upon.” However, agreement ceased with these principles, and the signs themselves were of an infinite variety of shapes, sizes and colors.

In 1922 the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Officials recommended that its members use distinctive standard shapes for warning signs—the circle for railroad crossings, the octagon for stop, and the diamond for caution. The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) adopted these shapes in 1924 and also the standard colors yellow for caution signs and red for stop signs, and in 1927 AASHO published the first Uniform Manual for Highway Signs. This included not only danger and regulatory signs, but also the famous black and white shield for routes on the U.S.-numbered highway system.

With additional financing by Congress, highway-railroad grade crossings were either eliminated or made safer with the addition of train activated warning systems.

Meantime the American Engineering Council was making a survey of sign practices in all American cities of over 50,000 population. The Council's 1929 130