High Road Toll

High Road Toll

Can Be Avoided

Richmond. . . .With an eye towards the dangers of the coming Labor Day weekend’s traffic, Colonel C. W. Woodson, Jr., Chairman of the Governor’s Highway Safety Committee and Superintendent of State Police, said today that past experience of this year in dicates strongly that a high holiday death toll can be avoid ed. For statistical purposes, he .said, both the Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends were considered 78-hour periods. The average weekend is considered to be a 54-hour .period statistically. Death totals for the two holiday periods were five and 11 respectively. The first was well below the average for a normal summer weekend and the second also below. Normal weekends this year have produced tolls as high as 19 and 25. •While, of Course, we can produce no definite proof, it does appear that the motoring public is heeding the mass warnings for holidays. On the other hand, it appears also that the public has the feeling that the danger is over once the holiday has passed,* commented Colonel Woodson.' “Any weekend, summer or winter, is abnormally dangerous,* he continued, and noted that summer ones are becoming more and more so, with August replacing December nationally as the highdeath month. “Colonel W 6 ocl son listed, from past experience, the most prevalent causes of fatal crashes during long holiday weekends as drinking and drlv ing, excessive speed and other acts rising from impatience, fatigue and drowsiness, and driver distraction. Closing, he asked drivers not only to be careful themselves but to be alert for those who are not. *It is cold comfort to a badly Injured driver or to the family of a dead one that he was not the one who made the fatal mistake,* he said.

Housewarming Held Mrs. Nannie Weaver of Hume; Va. was hostess Sunday at a house warming in honor of Mr. and Mrs. George Lawrence and family who have built a new home near Amlssville. The party was at the Lawrence home.