Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/254

 Perils of the Bad Road

By O. R. Geyer

��WITHIN the last few years Iowa has been brought face to face with the new problems of preventing the tfemenduous loss of life on the state's highways. Every state in the Union is confronted with the same problem. Failure to exercise even the most important safety first principles is costing the lives of more than one

��as a means of saving many lives.

The majority of these accidents could have been prevented with the exercise of a little more care, but since the average American is in too much of a hurry to protect his own life and the lives of others, the state must help him. Iowa lost seventy-five of her citizens through accidents which oc- curred on the highways of the state in the year ending November 1, 1915. The number of persons seriously in- jured was many times this, totaling about five hundred, according to the best information obtainable by the Highway Commission. Conservative estimates based on these returns from Iowa indicate that each year sees an average of from one thousand two hun- dred and fifty to two thousand persons

���Grade crossings and unsafe bridges constitute two of the gravest perils of the road, although the danger of unsafe bridges is more important in those districts where heavy farm machinery is moved than it is in the Eastern States. The illustratioa on the left shows a fatal accident caused by a farm tractor and trailer falling through a wooden trestle, resulting in two deaths. On the right is a typical grade crossing, with a dangerous sharp curve, in approaching which the driver's back is toward many approaching trains

��thousand Americans each year, accord- ing to statistics compiled by road ex- perts. This number is as large as the casualities in many a day's fighting in the world wide war. After much study, the State Highway Commission of Iowa is pushing vigorously a campaign for the building of permanent roads and bridges

��killed and more than five thousand seriously injured in accidents on the highways. This means that in each state of the Union more than twenty- five persons meet death on the high- ways in a year's time.

This loss of life and limb and the resultant destruction of property is

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