Drivers Trapped

Northern Advocate, 31 October 1936, Page 3 (Supplement)

Drivers Trapped

Decreasing Injuries

INGENIOUS AMERICAN SYSTEM

To impress the 600-odd truck drivers with the necessity of safe driving, the Brooklyn Edison Company has devised a scheme whereby injuries to pedestrians by their trucks have dropped 45 per cent in the last four years. This is the way it works: When any driver is to be tested, a fairly deserted street on his route is picked out and two photo-electric rays are secretly set up, spaced about 30ft apart and aimed so they will .be broken by a passing motor car. They emkhate' from contraptions disguised as fire hydrants. When the first ray is broken it starts a stop-watch, when the second ray is reached the watch stops, thus, registering the truck’s speed. And at this second impulse there is catapulted from behind a parked car a wooden dummy of a 12-year-old boy on roller-skates. If the driver 'has been going too fast or has not been watching, he runs over the dummy, which he has no reason to suspect is not really a child. He stops his truck ahd sits there quivering. Then the superintendent of transportation pops out from his hiding place, enters the whole sordid incident on his record sheet, and he and his aides go and lay for another driver.

Conclusions drawn from the tests show that it is dangerous to drive as fast as 20 miles an hour on a crowded street with cars parked on it. Fifteen is a lot better.—The “New Yorker.” 1