Remarks to a Special Group on the Role of the Press in Traffic Safety

I AM HAPPY to learn of the splendid program the daily and weekly newspapers of the country have adopted for the summer months as their contribution to the effort all of us are making to reduce the shocking cost in lives and human injuries of traffic accidents on America's streets and highways. The accomplishment of this objective is one of the most important tasks with which we are confronted.

Last year there was a series of tragedies which caught the headlines of the press everywhere because of their dramatic nature. In Illinois 47 persons died in a railroad wreck; a half-dozen sensational hotel fires caused the death of some 250 persons; and during the Christmas holiday season a succession of airplane disasters throughout the world brought death to another 250.

These were appalling accidents, and newspapers everywhere gave them great prominence. Through such publicity the public determination to prevent their recurrence was aroused. A fact that most of us overlooked, however, was that at the very same time many more persons were dying in traffic accidents on city streets and rural highways. Those first accidents were dramatic because we caught the impact of their cost in the aggregate, whereas the cost of traffic accidents usually receives little more than local attention because they are so widely scattered.

Therein is the nub of the problem before us. We must make the people understand that the aggregate of traffic accidents every year is a national tragedy. Once the people understand, they can be counted upon to apply the remedy that is within their own hands. The press of the country can make them so understand.

I have called the second President's Highway Safety Conference to convene in Washington on June 18, 19, and 20. Following the first conference last year traffic accidents decreased so sharply that some 6,600 lives were saved. I am asking the second conference to fix as its minimum goal the saving of 10,000 lives this year.

You gentlemen here today constitute a committee which speaks for most of the great press associations of the country, and through them for a majority of our newspapers. I am happy to welcome you to your meeting with General Fleming and I ask you to take this message to your own member publishers and your colleagues in the other States:

It is traditional in America for the people to look to the daily and weekly press not only as their source of information about current events but as their trusted guide in bettering the common welfare. The editors and publishers can perform no higher service than to guide their readers, those who walk as well as those who ride, to a complete understanding of the cost of traffic accidents in lives and injuries, and show them how simple it is to stop this tragic loss by merely practicing common sense safety.