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TRAFFIC CRASHES— NOT ACCIDENTS
Virginians who ride in > u t omobiles are playing a cruel joke on themselves.
In Virginia today, the Overwhelming majority of motorists are capable of driving safely and are riding in mechanically safe automobiles over safe highways.
Yet through Friday, 563 persons had been killed this year on highways; 12,479 more were injured in the first six months of 1953.
The toll Is rising all the time. No one —driver or pedestrian— is immune, from the chance of being killed or maimed in a; traffic crash.
What is the cause of this seeming paradox of more and'i more deaths and injuries at a time when motorists and the cars they drive are better than ever?
Three Virginia safety experts yesterday agreed there is! something wrong with the basid spiritual attitudes of people therfiselves to allow the crashes to continue. The three are:
Charles H. Lamb, State. Commissioner of Motor Vehicles; Colonel Charles W. Woodson, superintendent of State Police, and William L. Groth, director of the Richmond Department of Public safety.
Lamb said traffic accidents can be cut, but aren't because people simply don’t want to drive better.
“The only way the great number of traffic deaths and accidents can be reduced is not to pass strict er laws or attempt stricter enforcement of laws, but to change the basic feeling of people themselves ' toward, driving” Lamb said.
“Of course we need proper (laws, amended from time to time to keep them up to date or to cover new needs” he added, “the same applies to enforcement."
But laws and enforcement alone are not the answers.
This is proved by court Records he said.
Every time a community’s law enforcement bodies start a campaign to get all drunk and reckless drivers off the streets, the campaign stalls, he added.
The reason, said Lamb, is that jurors won’t send traffic violators to jail, except in rare cases.
“The logic of this is that jurors being drivers themselves, hesitate to inflict severe penalities on traffic-law offenders because they think of themselves, “There but for the grace of God, go I "Lamb explained. ,
Groth said Virginians though
58.2%