GROWTH OF MOTOR ACCIDENTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 7

GROWTH OF MOTOR ACCIDENTS.

During the period 1904-1923, the cancer mortality rate in England and Woles increased ’by approximately 50 per cent., whilst the mortality from accidents caused by motor' vehicles increased by over 1000 per cent. The increase in cancer mortality has rightly aroused the keenest anxiety, but the far greater increase in mortality from motor accidents has not received the attention- it deserves, says the “World’s Health.” The number of street accidents notified in Great Britain during the four years, 1922 to 1925, ia as follows:—l 922 'fatal 2760. lion-fatal 70,197; 1923, fatal 2970, non-fatal 93,101; 1924, fatal 3631, nonfatal 98,215: 1925. fatal 3971, non-fatal 115,473. Of these, the majority was due to motor vehicles.

The Minister of Transport has pointed out that the chances of being killed on the railway are 165,000,000 to one, compared with 10,000 to one in the London streets.

If the British figures are disquieting, the American arc far more so, for while the motor-car death-rate was 5.4 per 100,009 living in England and Wales in 1922, it was 12.5 in America, which means that in America one is more than twice as likely to be killed by a motor vehicle as in England. No fewer than 21.000 people met their deaths in motor accidents in the United States during 1-025, an increase of 5 per cent, over 1924, while 678,000 were seriously injured. At least 4500 of the 21.000 persons who were killed by motors in 1925 were children between the ages of five and fifteen. Incompetent driving is responsible each year for a number of deaths; but even more deadly than the incompetent driver is the competent but careless driver.

An interesting idea has been adopted in New York for the safeguarding of school children. During the lunch-hour certain strr its—naturally not the busiest ones _of the city—are closed to traffic. A barrier is placed at each end of the street, and no traffic of any kind is allowed down it.