Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/255

 Popular Science Monthly

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����Such bridges as these are responsible for many fataUties. When the spring rains cause the rivers to rise, these Hght bridges are carried away, or so undermined that they cannot support the weight of an or- dinary automobile

��costing the country about twenty-five million dollars a year, a sum sufficient to build many miles of paved roads — an estimate based on an allowance of ten thousand dollars as the value of a human life. The loss in Iowa, econom- ic and real, is more than one million dollars.

The greatest contributing factors to this huge death list are bad roads and bridges, speeding and reckless driving. The Iowa Highway Commission, realizing that it cannot put a stop to reckless driving and speeding, is work- ing on a plan to make the highways as safe as possible, and has succeeded in bringing about a material reduction in the number of accidents. Still, the commission realizes that even the safest roads will not make speeding entirely safe. It has begun a cam- paign against reckless driving.

Second in the list comes the grade railroad crossing, which takes an un- usually heavy toll of lives and mangled limbs in a year's time. There are eight thousand six hundred and sev- enty-six railroad crossings in Iowa, and

��of this number nine hundred have been classed as a constant menace to life by the commission. The work of remov- ing these dangerous crossings was taken up in a serious manner more than a year ago, and at the present time nearly one hundred of the nine hundred crossings are scheduled for improvement in 1916. Improvements were completed on eighteen crossings during 1915.

The task of removing and relocating these bad crossings is a stupenduous one, the average cost of each change ordered so far being four thousand four hundred and forty-seven dollars. At this rate it would cost Iowa nearly twenty million dollars as her share of the improvement. The railroads must pay a sum equally as large, too, before these nine hundred crossings are made safe for ordinary travel. The question as to whether these costly improve- ments are worth while is best answer-

���Another view of the tractor and trailer

which fell through a wooden trestle. The

driver of the machine and his assistant

died on the way to the hospital

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