Evening Star Newspaper, September 15, 1935, Page 9

- - - And Sudden Death By J. C. The Star is repr;nting this Council campaign for careful has been obtained from the Reader’s Digest. Like the gruesome spectacle of a bad automobile accident itself, the | fealistic details of this article will | nauseate some readers. Those who find themselves thus affected at the outset are cautioned against reading the article in its entirety, since there is no letdown in the author’s outspoken treatment of sickening facts. lion last year, with 36,000 deaths—never gets to first bas¢ in jarring the motorist into a realization of the appalling risks of motoring. He does not translate dry statistics into a reality of blood and egony. | Figures exclude the pain and horror | savage mutilation—which means They need | UBLICIZING the total of mo- P toring injuries—almost a mil- | of they leave out the point. to be brought closer home. A passing | look at a bad smash or the news | that a fellow you had lunch with | last week is in a hospital with a broken back will make any driver but a born fool slow down at least temporarily. But what is needed is | & vivid and sustained realization that | every time you step on the throttle death gets in beside you, hopefully waiting for his chance. That single horrible accident you may have wit- hessed is no isolated horror. That sort of thing happens every hour of | the day, everywhere in the United | Btates. If you really felt that, per- haps the cold lines of type in Mon- day's paper recording that a total of 29 local citizens were Kkilled in week end crashes would rate something more than a perfunctory tut-tut as you turn back to the sports page. An enterprising judge now and again sentences reckless drivers to tour the accident end of a city morgue. But even a mangled body on a slab, waxily portraying the consequences of bad motoring judgment, isn't a patch on the scene of the accident itself. No artist working on a safety poster would dare depict that in full detail. H That picture would haye to include motion-picture and sound efects, too—the flopping, pointless efforts of the injured to stand up: the queer, | grunting noises; the steady, panting, groaning of a human being with pain creeping up on him as the shock wears off. It should portray the slack expression on the face of a man,| drugged with shock, staring at the Z-twist in his broken leg, the insane crumpled effect of a child’s body after its bones are crushed inward, a realistic portrait of an hysterical woman with her screaming mouth opening a hole in the bloody drip that fills her eyes and runs off her chin. Minor details would include the raw ends of bones protruding through flesh in compound fractures, and the dark red, oozing surfaces where clothes and skin were flayed off at once. | Those are all standard, every-day | sequels to the modern passion for going places in a hurry and taking a chance or two by the way. If| ghosts could be put to a useful pur- pose, every bad stretch of road in the United States would greet the oncoming motorist with groans and screams and the educational spectacle | of ten or a dozen corpses, all sizes, | gexes and ages, lying horribly stul | on the bloody grass. Last year a State trooper of my #cquaintance stopped a big red | Hispano for speeding. Papa was ob- | viously a responsible person, obviously | set for a pleasant week end with | his family—so the officer cut into | papa’s well-bred expostulations: “I'll let you off this time, but if you keep on this way you won't last long. Get going—but take it easier.” Later a passing motorist hailed the trooper and asked if the red Hispano had got a ticket. “No,” said the trooper, “I hated to spoil their party.” | ing crew pried the door off a car | driver with only a scratch on his | cheek. But his mother was still in- | top driven four inches into her brain | haired corpse still clutching her pock- | etbook in her lap as she had clutched Furnas, article as an aid in its Safety driving. Special permission you are spared the lethal array of gleaming metal knobs and edges and glass inside the car. Anything can happen in that split second of crash, even those lucky escapes you hear about. People have dived through windshields and come out with only superficial scratches. They have run cars together head on, reducing both to twisted junk, and been found unhurt and arguing bit- terly two minutes afterward. But death was there just the same—he was only exercising his privilege of being erratic. This Spring a wreck- which had been overturned down an embankment and out stepped the side, a splinter of wood from the as a result of son's taking a greasy curve a little too fast. No blood—no horribly twisted bones—just a gray- it when she felt the car leave the | road. On that same curve a month later a light touring car crashed a tree. In the middle of the front seat they | found a 9-month-old baby surrounded | by broken glass and yet absolutely unhurt. A fine practical joke on death—but spoiled by the baby's | parents, still sitting on each side of him, instantly killed by shattering their skulls on the dashboard. | If you customarily pass without clear vision a long way ahead, make sure that every member of the party carries identification papers—it's dif- ficult to identify a body with its whole face bashed in or torn off. | The driver is death's favorite target. | If the steering wheel holds together it ruptures his liver or spleen so he bleeds to death internally. Or, if the steering wheel breaks off, the matter is settled instantly by the steering column’s plunging through his ab- domen. By no means do all head-on col- lisions occur on curves. The modern death-trap is likely to be a straight stretch with three lanes of traffic— like the notorious Astor Flats on the Albany Post Road, where there have been as many as 27 fatalities in one Summer month. This sudden vision of broad, straight road tempts many an ordinarily sensible driver into pass- ing the man ahead. Simultaneously & driver coming the other way swings out at high speed. At the last mo- ment each tries to get into line again, but the gaps are closed. As the cars in line are forced into the ditch to oapsize or crash fences, the passers meet, almost head on, in a swirling, grinding smash that sends them caroming obliquely into the others. A trooper described such an ac- cident—five cars in one mess, seven killed on the spot, two dead on the way to the hospital, two more dead in the long run. He remembered it far more vividly than he wanted to— the quick way the doctur turned away | from a dead man to check up on a woman with a broken back: the three bodies out of one car so soaked with oil from the crankcase that they looked like wet brown cigars and not human at all; a man, walking around and babbling to himself, oblivious of the dead and dying. even oblivious of the daggerlike sliver of steel that stuck out of his streaming wrist; a - | pretty girl with her forehead laid | open, trying hopelessly to crawl out of a ditch in spite of her smashed hip. A first-class massacre of that sort is only a question of scale and numbers—seven corpses are no deader than one. Each shattered man, woman or child who went to make up the 36,000 corpses chalked up last year had to die a personal death. A car careening and rolling down a bank, battering and smashing its occupants every inch of the way, can wrap itself so thoroughly around a THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., SEPTEMBER 15, Brewery Joins‘ Campaign The Christian Heurich Brewing affiliate with The Evening Star fo foster careful driving. brewery to sign up its drivers. Left manager; Chris Heurich, jr., treasurer, and W. Allen Stowell, purchasing agent. Co. forms its own safety council to It is the first to right: Charles E. Eckles, sales —Star Staff Photo. | amount of blood under such circum- | stances. Even safety glass may not be wholly safe when the car crashes something at high speed. You hear picturesque tales of how a flying human body will make a neat hole | in the stuff with its head—the shoul- ders stick—the glass holds—and the raw. keen edge of the hole decapitates the body as neatly as a guillotine. Or, to continue with the decapita- tion motif, going off the road into a post-and-rail fence can put you beyond worrying about other injuries imme- diately when a rail comes through the windshield and tears off your head with its splintery end—not as neat a job, but thoroughly efficient. Bodies are often found with their | shoes off and their feet all broken | out of shape. The shoes are back on | the floor of the car, empty and with thelr laces still neatly tied. That | is the kind of impact produced by | modern speeds. But all that is routine in every | skull, . American community. To be remem- | bered individually by doctors and po- licemen, you have to do something as grotesque as the lady who burst the windshield with her head, splash- ing splinters all over the other oc- | cupants of the car, and then, as the | car rolled over, rolled with it. down | the edge of the windshield frame | and cut her throat from ear to ear. Or park on the pavement too near a curve at night and stand in front of the tail light as you take off the spare tire—which will immortalize you in somebody’s memory, as the fellow who was mashed three feet | broad and two inches thick by the | impact of a heavy duty truck against | the rear of his own car. Or be as | original as the pair of youths who were thrown out of an open roadster | this Spring—thrown clear—but each broke a windshield post with his head in passing and the whole top of each down to the eyebrows, was missing. Or snap off a nine-inch | tree and get yourself impaled by a ragged branch. . None of all that is scare-fiction; it is just the horrible raw material of the year's statistics as seen in the ordinary course of duty by policemen and doctors, picked at random. The surprising thing is that there is so | :ltltlle dissimilarity in the stories they ell. - It’s hard to find a surviving acci- dent victim who can bear to talk. After you come to, the gnawing, sear- ing pain throughout your body is ac- counted for by learning that you have both collarbones smashed, both shoul- der blades splintered, your right arm broken in three places and three ribs cracked, with every chance of bad | internal ruptures. But the pain can't distract you, as the shock begins to | wear off, from realizing that you are probably on your way out. You can't forget that, not even when they shift you from the ground to the stretcher and your broken ribs bite into your lungs and the sharp ends of your collarbones slide over to stab deep into each side of your screaming throat. When you've stopped scream- ing it all comes back—you're dying and you hate yourself for it. That isn't fiction either. It's what it actually feels like.to be one of that 36,000. And every time you pass on n: blind curve, every time you hit it up on a slippery road, every time you step on it harder than your reflexes will safely take, every time you drive | with your reactions slowed down by a drink or two, every time you follow | you're | the man ahead too closely, gambling a few seconds against this kind of blood and agony and sudden death in the white jacket shakes his head over you, tells the boys with the stretcher not to bother and turns away to somebody else who isn't quite dead yet. And then take it easy. SeEnaRe Broadcasting Studied. After an exhaustive investigation a British committee is preparing a re- port on the future of broadcasting, Y (i S A8Vl i 7@ f Solitaire Platinum Riny Set with Baguette Total weight, .55 Ct. Priced Vi7aY@Yire Ot with 12 small diamond: Priced Diamond Rings Sale Price 424.95 3.36 Ct. Gorgeous Diamond 33 IT'S DIAMOND WEEK AT PEARSON & CRAIN, INC. 1329 F St. N.W. 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Perfect Diamond Ring Set with diamonds and emeralds at the picture the artist wouldn't dare paint, a first-hand acquaintance with the results of mixing gasoline with speed and bad judgment, ought to be well worth your while. I can't help it if the facts are revolting. If you have the nerve to drive fast and take chances, you ought to have the nerve to take the appropriate cure. ‘You can’t ride an ambulance or watch the doctor working on the victim in the hospital, but you can read. The automobile is treacherous, just #s a cat is. It is tragically difficult to realize that it can become the dead- liest missile. As enthusiasts tell you, it makes 65 feel like nothing at all. But 65 an hour is 100 feet a second, o speed which puts a viciously un- Justified responsibility on brakes and human reflexes, and can instantly turn this docile luxury into a mad bull elephant. Collision, turnover or sideswipe, each type of accident produces either & shattering dead stop or a crashing change of direction—and, since the occupant—meaning you—continues in the old direction at the original speed, every surface and angle of the car’s interior immediately becomes a bat- tering, tearing projectile, aimed squarely at you—inescapable. There is no bracing yourself against these imperative laws of momentum. It's like going over Niagara Falls in a steel barrel full of railroad spikes. The best thing that can happen to you—and one of the rarer things— is to be thrown out as the doors spring open, so you have only the ground to reckon with. True, you strike with @s much force as if you had been thrown from the Twentieth Century at top speed. But at least Overturning cars specialize in cer- tain injuries. Cracked pelvis, for in- stance, guaranteeing agonizing months in bed, motionless, perhaps crippled for life—broken spine resulting from sheer sidewise twist—the minor de- tails of smashed knees and splintered shoulder blades caused by crashing into the side of the car as she goes over with the swirl of an insane roller coaster—and the lethal consequences of broken ribs, which puncture hearts and lungs withetheir raw ends. The consequent internal hemorrhage is no less dangerous because it is the pleural instead of the abdominal cavity that is filling with blood. Flying glass—safety glass is by no means universal yet—contributes much more than its share to the spectacular side of accidents. It doesn’t merely cut—the fragments are driven in as if a cannon loaded with broken bot- tles had been fired in your face, and & sliver in the eye, traveling with such force, means certain blindness. 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