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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Oct. 16, 1964
Average Driver Best
The Bureau of Public Roads in Washington, D.C., recently issued a report challenging a widely accepted theory that the chances of an accident increase in proportion to the rate of speed. But it pointed out that teen-age drivers are a hazard on the road when compared with mature drivers.
In this high speed age, the bureau said, figures indicate the chances for an accident of a car traveling at 20 miles an hour are "sharply higher" than either the 40- or 80 mile-an-hour vehicle.
The bureau's report probably is little consolation to a stalled vehicle driver who has heard a diesel truck coming at full bay along a fog-covered highway at midnight, but figures indicate the accident rate for automobile drivers is three times higher than the rate of drivers of large trucks at night.
There is little difference between truck driver and automobile driver accidents during the day, the bureau added.
The figures indicate that a driver has to be "average" in order to lessen his chances for an accident.
The bureau said a 40-year-old driver in a two year-old,200-horsepower automobile traveling at 64 miles an hour would average one accident in 1.6 million miles, while an 18-year-old driver in a six-year-old,100-horsepower car traveling at 20 miles an hour would average one mishap every 12,000 miles.
Drivers less than 25 years of age or more than 65 are more likely to be involved in accidents, the bureau said.
A conclusion, apparently, from the bureau's figures should be that hop-skotching around drive-ins is more dangerous than roading back and forth to work. There is little doubt that the millions of miles logged by commuters have tended to lop-side traffic figures.
The bureau said older, low-powered automobiles were involved in accidents more often than newer, high-powered cars. An attendant at service station on a busy highway once remarked that the best way ot get out of the station was to wait until one saw a "bright, shiny new car" zipping down the highway and then bucket out in front of it.
The bureau said almost half of all accidents involved either rear-end collisions or sideswipes involving two cars moving in the same direction.
In this day of directional signals—with an emphasis on "defensive driving"—laws indicate that the fellow behind is liable for everything that happens in front.
"You are responsible for maintaining control of your car," the traffic cop points out as he whips out his .03 caliber ball point to write up a motorist who bumped another car.
The police judge is not too sympathetic, either, when it is pointed out that the driver of the car ahead jammed on the brakes because little Suzy tumbled from the front to the back seat.
But what can one expect from a driver trying to rod an American bathtub like a foreign sports car?
High speeds account for a larger number of fatalities, the bureau said, and at high speeds a larger proportion of accidents involved only one vehicle.
The bureau's accident study emphasized that the "average" driver is involved in fewer accidents. Maybe this is one area of operation in which persons should strive to be members of a huge conformity group—assisted, of course, by law enforcement officials.
Tom Hough
Pennsylvania Voters' Choice Johnson-Humphrey Ticket
(The following article is one of a series dealing with states and the nation to be run along with the articles on campaign issues until the election.)
When a political party official has to warn nominees for state and local offices not to dump the national ticket or run independently, that party is in trouble. Such is the plight of the Republicans in Pennsylvania, a major political battleground since the beginning of the New Deal.
LIKE RATS ABOARD sinking ships, politicians don't like to associate themselves with losing causes, and the worry Sen. Barry Goldwater has been inflicting upon Pennsylvania's GOP nominees was brought out not long ago by the Philadelphia Republican chairman.
He admitted that congressional and legislative candidates are often campaigning as independents or are trying to dissociate themselves from Sen. Goldwater through appeals for ballot-splitting in November. And several weeks ago, it was noticed that campaign literature of Sen. Hugh Scott had something of interest for nearly every voter except Goldwater fans.
WHEN THE Kennedy-Johnson ticket brought Pennsylvania back to the Democrats for the first time since 1944, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans over the state by only 3.000. What accounted for that additional 113,000 ballots was Philadelphia, which gave the Democratic ticket a 331,000 vote
margin. That this might occur again is reflected in the current registration totals for Philadelphia, showing 713,000 Democrats and 410,000 Republicans.
PROSPECTS FOR the Goldwater-Miller ticket look bleak, but not so those for Sen. Scott, a GOP moderate who managed Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton's campaign for the Republican nomination. His literature has him pictured with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Eisenhower, but not with candidate Goldwater. He has also told audiences this fall of his difficulties with Goldwater—on such matters as civil rights and federal public housing and slum clearance programs —and of his esteem for President Johnson.
Dailij1fänsan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Roy Miller Managing Editor
Don Black, Leta Cathecart, Bob Jones, Greg Swartz, Assistant Managing Editors; Linda Ellis, Feature-Society Editor; Russ Corbitt, Sports Editor;
Steve Williams, Photo Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Jim Langford and Rick Mabbatt ...
Jim Langford and Rick Mabbutt ...
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bob Phinney ... Business Manager
John Pepper, Advertising Manager; Dick Flood, National Advertising Manager; John Subler, Classified Advertising Manager; Tom Fisher, Promotion Manager; Nancy Holland, Circulation Manager; Gary Grazda, Merchandising Manager.
"Nevertheless," Sen. Scott said Sept. 17, "I have been chairman of the Republican National Committee, I was our party's national counsel and I am a candidate for office on the Republican ticket—and our party rules require that officers of the Republican Party support all candidates on the Republican ticket." Note the word "require."
SEN. SCOTT'S middle-of-the road appeal, plus his experience and exposure, plus the lack of experience of his opponent, State Secretary of the Interior Genevieve Blatt, make him the favorite for Nov. 3. But nothing short of a turn of events which would defeat the Democrats nationally should stop the Johnson-Humphrey duo from winning in Pennsylvania.
— Fred Frailev
"In This World Series, One Wild Pitch Ends The Whole Ball Game"
The People Say...
Editor:
SINCE OUR WONDERFUL university has become so concerned with parking regulations and driver safety, I suggest it's time to do something about that treacherous race track that Memorial Drive has become. Since Jayhawk Blvd. has been declared off-limits, the Drive receives triple the amount of traffic it was designed to carry. It is a scant two lanes in width, has constant curves, and one must be prepared to slam on the brakes at any moment since students stop (often without pulling off the road) to let off passengers. Isn't it about time somebody started thinking about widening it? Its new status as the most accessible road through campus should merit some attention from the administrative wizards who started the whole mess.
M. Crabtree Graduate student
That in itself may or may not be newsworthy. It is certainly not what inspires this letter. I am inspired more by the reaction to these wholly legal, non-violent and non-libelous demonstrations.
Editor:
FOR THE PAST SEVERAL Saturdays the Lawrence chapter of Congress of Racial Equality has picketed the Dunes Club on Iowa Street, to publicize their disagreement with that club's continued policy of hardshell racial discrimination.
IN ONE INSTANCE, a demonstrator's sign was forcibly taken from him and smashed. There was no retaliation. In another instance, the son of the management threw eggs at the demonstrators. No retaliation. The Saturday just passed, when I joined the picket line, was a fairly mundane occasion. We were "strafed" with a water pistol, received a few shouted obscenities from passing cars, and received well over two dozen of those colloquial sign gestures of contempt.
THE MAJORITY OF THESE cars bore KU windshield stickers. Of these, a substantial majority bore Greek letter decals. I would suppose, therefore, that these were a sampling of the social and intellectual elite of this community. "Conservatism," or whatever you choose to call it, is fortunate indeed to have such articulate spokesmen who so clearly reveal the real, basic tenets of its system.
john Garlinghouse
Salina sophomore
1
To the Editor:
10. the Editor.
If the editorial which appeared in the UDK on Oct. 7, 1964, is representative of the "thinking" being done today by the newspaper reporters and editors of tomorrow, the future of journalism is a bleak one.
AS ANY 6TH GRade STUDENT of American History knows, the equal representation of the states in the senate resulted from two basic facts. 1) The smaller states could not hope to compete in population with the larger ones. 2) Until the constitution was adopted, the states were "sovereign" political entities. Moreover, they intended to remain so, insofar as was possible, after the constitution had been adopted. All the states, then, were given equal representation in the senate to assure that one sovereign state could not be tyrannized by other sovereign states.
MR. NOLAN CLOAKED his muddled editorial thinking with two quotes plucked at random from the body of the court's opinion. A close examination of the opinion would have revealed that the court discussed and rejected one of the two grounds which Mr. Nolan used as a basis for criticism.
THE SITUATION "WITHIN" the states was, and is, entirely different. The only sovereign in the state is the state government itself. Counties and cities are creatures of the state government and owe abject obedience to the state, as it might require. In theory, therefore, the state government represents only the "citizens" of that state. Hence, the formula mentioned by the court—one man, one vote. To permit any other scheme of representations is to perpetuate a grave injustice.
THE SECOND GROUND upon which Mr. Nolan criticized the court hardly warrants comment. A cursory examination of the speech quoted in the editorial indicates that it was a "political" speech delivered by, what was then, the "political leader" of the state. For Mr. Warren to have openly criticized the structure of his state's political organization, would have been political suicide, just as, apparently, it would have been academic suicide for the UDK to have given adequate coverage to an incident which occurred on this campus last Sunday and which received headlines in the Lawrence paper and was flashed across the country on the wire services.
W. P. Robertson Second year law