Remarks Upon Proclaiming National Defense Transportation Day and National Transportation Week.

Secretary Connor, distinguished Members of the Congress, distinguished leaders of labor and business communities, and my very dear friends:

I have asked you to come here today because I am proclaiming the week of May 15th as the National Transportation Week.

I am also today proclaiming Friday, May 20th, as National Defense Transportation Day.

I have invited these leaders of our great transportation industry here because I believe this occasion is doubly significant. At this very moment, two bold and vital items of transportation legislation are pending in our Congress. They will give the green light to the revolutionary era that our entire transportation system must now launch upon.

The first of these measures calls for the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Transportation.

And let us be clear about this proposal. It is much more than just a desirable Government reorganization plan. I believe that it is very critical to the future of transportation in the United States.

It would be difficult for me to overemphasize what I really believe is at stake, because transportation is more than a major force in the 20th century, modern America.

--First, it is a source of employment to more than 2 ½ million of our citizens.

--It is the source of one in every five dollars of our economy.

--It is the lifeline of travel and commerce.

And our system of transportation, the greatest in history, was built by the genius of free enterprise. And as long as I am your President it is going to be sustained by free enterprise.

But we must face facts. And a system that just "grow'd like Topsy" is no longer adequate in times as complex and as changing as those we're going through today.

In the next two decades the demand for transportation in this country is going to double. But we are already falling behind--our transportation lifeline is tangled--our gears are worn and they're dangerously strained.

--Too many of our highways today are congested and are unsafe.

--Too many of our airways are reaching the saturation 'point.

We read about this every day when we pick up the paper or when we tune in our radio or television commentator, yet we just seem to accept it and do nothing about it:

--Highways that are congested and unsafe.

--Airways that have reached the saturation point.

--Equipment that is old and obsolete-and what is modern and good is often in very short supply.

--Our new technologies are being ignored.

--Our research and development, all admit, are inadequate.

--Our governmental policies need better coordination and the Government needs, better leadership.

We spend here in the Federal Government $6 billion annually of your money on transportation. But we must spend it wisely-and I would like to spend it effectively, if you would give me the instruments to do so.

The Federal Government has more than 100,000 employees involved in transportation programs, and we must employ their talents in a purposeful effort and coordinated--if you will give us permission to do so.

We have a variety of agencies and bureaus scattered all over the place, administering what we refer to as transportation policy. But instead of siding and encouraging and providing constructive leadership for our transportation industry, we too often find them harassing and hindering and confusing it.

Now we can change all of that. Out of this partnership between the Government and industry and labor can grow a well-planned and thoroughly coordinated national transportation system, and we think we can make it fast, and efficient, and safe, and dependable, and completely up to date.

And we think if we do that, that all Americans will benefit.

So we have proposed that a National Transportation Safety Board be created under the Secretary of Transportation. The sole function of this board will be safety-safety of people who travel. This board will:

--Investigate the accidents to seek their causes, and do it in a judicial and, I trust, non-emotional way;

--It will determine compliance and whether we're getting it with our safety standards;

--It will carefully examine the adequacy of such standards;

--It will assume the safety functions that are transferred from the ICC and the CAB.

A second bill now before Congress commits the Government for the first time in history to try to do something about the slaughter--the senseless slaughter on our highways.

Each year 50,000 Americans die on American highways. Each year 100,000 Americans are permanently disabled on American highways. Each year nearly 4 million Americans are injured on our highways. Now this has a frightening familiarity-and familiarity has bred, if not contempt, I'm afraid an inexcusable indifference.

Another statistic that's equally grim but not so familiar--and one that I hope you'll remember--is, since 1961 we have lost four times as many American servicemen in motor vehicle accidents as our enemies have been able to kill in the fighting in Vietnam.

Now we must no longer tolerate such anarchy on wheels.

We can no longer tolerate unsafe automobiles.

We can no longer tolerate poorly planned and badly lighted highways that all of us are responsible for, and perhaps I am more responsible than anyone in this room.

We can no longer tolerate ineffective safety programs that result from the complete lack of basic research into what is truly and actually causing our accidents.

The Highway Safety Act of 1966 will move us out of the stone age of ignorance and reaction.

It will support the State programs of driver education and of licensing procedures.

It will establish a Federal research and testing center to probe the why's and the how's of traffic accidents--in the context of the total environment: the driver, the automobile, the road.

It will establish a program of strict safety standards for our automobiles. And I just cannot overemphasize the need for such standards.

The alternative to Federal standards is unthinkable.

What do we have? What is the alternative? Fifty different sets of standards for 50 different States. And that is going to be the result, the inevitable result, of our do-nothing action here.

The American people, I think, could become aroused. I believe the American people want constructive action in this area. I believe they want to move forward in this field.

But I want to be, and I think you want to be, fair and intelligent. And the American driver and the great industry that provides his car--I want them all to get a fair shake. And judge not lest ye be judged, and we all can be judged in this instance, from the President of the United States down to the youngest boy with a driver's license. And it is just silly for us to continue slaughtering 50,000 people.

I'm not here to blame any one or any individual or any group, except myself, and I would blame myself this morning if I didn't say that I think the time has passed and it is here, for us to start doing something about it.

Now I have taken my stand; I have submitted my recommendations. They're going to step on some people's toes; some are going to become martyrs; some are going to harass and delay and obstruct and be selfish, as they always are when you present recommendations to the Congress. But I want to appeal to you in the name of 50,000 people who are dying today to please come and cooperate and coordinate, and let's try--let's try with everything we've got to reduce this slaughter.

Now these programs, I believe, are the beginning. I think they'll provide solid steps for making material reductions of the deaths that are now taking place on our roads.

And so, today, I sign this proclamation on a note of excitement and hope. Because of the actions we take this year, our children, I think, will come of age in a modern society--where transportation is not only fast and economical but where it's safe.

And if we can bring that about I think each of you will be proud to say to your grandchildren that you sat in this room today when we launched this effort, when we signed this transportation proclamation, when we appealed to the Congress to give us a decision and some guidelines and some rules--and when we moved ahead.

I said to a man last night how much I felt we had to be thankful for in our Government. I had innumerable problems that I couldn't find the answer to. But I looked back over and saw where I'd been in the last few weeks, and the cooperation that had existed with this system that was set up almost 200 years ago by our forefathers, and how the Supreme Court and the courts, and how the Congress, and how the Executive, and how the people of both parties, of different religions, of different races, of different sections--how they were coordinating and working together. And I don't think I have ever been prouder of our whole system than now.

I had a report from Governor Bryant on the Governors he had talked to. And you couldn't tell who was a Democrat or a Republican from the report he had. He just gave the Governor by name and said: "Here's what he said and how he wants to help."

I had a report from our mayors, and it gave me great satisfaction that we don't engage in name calling and smearing and exposing and humiliating our coworkers and our colleagues in other branches of Government. We're all concerned with one thing. We're so busy moving ahead that we, trying to get ahead, don't spend any time trying to get even.

And that's what I want to say to the transportation industry this morning: whether you run a big railroad line with a choo-choo, or whether you have a diesel truck, or whether you have an inland waterway, or whether you come under the Army Engineers or the Reclamation Service, or whether you're afraid of getting a little tax on diesel fuel or an airline ticket, or how or who makes an automobile or how dangerous it is, or how many the manufacturer personally killed himself, or he didn't kill last year--let's submerge all these personal feelings in the matter and just keep our eye on the big ball.

There are 50,000 people that are dying. Now there are 1,400 that have died in Vietnam since January the 1st. We lost 50,000-50 times as many people dying right here under your nose as you're talking about dying out there. Now, we don't want a single one of them to die. And I'm going to try to do something about keeping their deaths to a minimum out there. And I'm also going to try to do something about keeping them at a minimum here.

But we need the help of every person in this room. And, you may have to back up a little bit, you may have to moderate your views a little bit, you may have to quench your thirst for a little blood a little bit and not run over the President or the Congress with your pressure. But come on and let us help with these two things:

--A transportation leader in the Cabinet that can sit there and can speak for every element and know what he's talking about.

--An act that will give us the ways and means and modus operandi to do something about these 50,000 people that are dying, these 100,000 that are permanently disabled, this mass slaughter.

Now, we don't have long to do it between now and election. And I hope those of you that have been a little picayunish and got out your glasses and tried to find something wrong with this suggestion or that one will kind of give and take a little bit, and next time we meet here in the room Senator Mansfield will be bringing me a bill and saying "Right here's where you sign--on the dotted line."