Daily Observer
We have been
had. The railroads have turned into concrete roads, highways, parkways and
turnpikes. Buses ply their way in competition with trucks, and the trolley cars
are wither in
Looking over
my alumni bulletins I note sadly that all of the recent graduates who have
died, boys and girls in their twenties, are victims of auto accidents. Whereas
a long train could transport 1000 people with one engineer it now takes 250 to
500 (depending on car pooling) racing drivers to transport themselves and
family and friends to destinations near and far.
When I was at college students were not permitted to own cars. We made
the long tedious trek homewards or back to school on the rails. Slow, sooty,
boring, fatiguing, but safe. Not one of my classmates ever died commuting. Now
they seem to be going in droves. If the nation has 50,000 auto deaths a year
surely there are half a million casualties, some so severe that death might
have been preferable.
We ask everyone between 16 and 100 to be capable of driving an
automobile that inevitably has reflexes faster than the driver; to become a
Barney Oldfield or A. J. Foyt, or a Mario Andretti. We even have pit stops
every twenty or so miles to gas up .
Now even the truckers are starting togged the idea that rails are cheap
transportation because they are driving tandems, and sometimes you see three
coupled 18 wheelers weaving along the highway. That means instead of one
trailer jackknifing in a skid there will be two. Instead of one lane of traffic
crippled, two or three lanes. Automobiles will cascade into the blocking
trailers. We seem to be doing everything to make things safe – for business. We
have fed the automobile industry, the truckers, the steel mills and concrete
companies, not only with our money but with our lives. And those of our
children.
If 5 percent of the people at any given moment is driving; that is 10
million vehicles at a time across the nation, we can expect blowouts, skids,
vertigo, heart attacks, small strokes and
large ones, each of which events will be lethal not only to the driver,
but whomever he runs into; lovers
honeymooners, workers, vacationers, babies.
We have turned everyone into a racing driver with none of the
protections offered the racer. Seat belts may be helpful, but thanks to Ralph
Nader we have also created a car door that will not spring open. People have
burned to death because they were unable to escape the fire after the accident.
To compensate for this we have added metal cutting equipment to rescue squad
instruments. The madness is self perpetuating, as most madness is.
It is time to backtrack. It is time to build for ourselves safe and
efficient public transportation. It is time to put our fate and that of our
loved ones in the hands of one good railroad engineer or pilot instead of
pitting one against the other on the highways. The toll is too high.
The trouble is we have been subjected to highway robbery. Too bad we
couldn’t have been railroaded instead.