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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 2, 1957)
1 Lot9 UnnD'ffy MT Tl 111 i ' ' 1 ": i !!) ' ....... .. I ou'm: taking a Summer vacation trip with your family heading into northern Michigan for sunn1 fishing and swimming. Von enter Michigan from out-of-state, and you're moving along the highway at a comfortable speed when the driver of the Mich igan ear in front of you puts his left arm straight out the window and stows down as you approach an intersect ion. The pavement widens at the intersection and, after slowing down, you sw inn the right to pass. Hut just as you start around, the other car turns directly in front of you. and you hit it amidships. You're lucky; you were slowed sufficiently so that no one was hurt. Hut the damage to both cars runs up in the hundreds of dollars. Whose fault'' Yours, of course. Hut, you say, he turned i lvilit after signaling for a left turn! Sure, it was a left turn signal m yoiir state hut not in Mich igan. There the left dim extended enn mean a start, stop, or turn in 1'ither direction! This is only one example of ninny hundreds of complex, confusnm. mid conlhoting truffle law across the length and hieadth of the United States Sup imsedly treated to protect motorists, in many casts these las do exactly tile )Xsito. As 0 result, many Americans motonnu cross-counti y this iir w ill find themselves in trouble not of their own making. Consider souc of the other remarkable contra dictions in tiuffic laws. In one ei iss-country trip last yc!tr, I iau into tl'.o following wo!ter of confusion: In one Midwestern town. 1 was tongue-lashed by a icliccman lor turning ughl after a stop for a rod light; in nlti'tl.ci c,t m the Mine Male. I was c'lflS'Oni'J ti'r holding up traffic by not tiii n;ij) under ho same cilrutiisances. hi iic'thor i.'ase wns there n slglt lI'tilUltlltK tho jn'OpOi pinoeduro In Colorado and Vtah. 1 w.is honked .it jiv cssantlv 4 Family Wttkly, Jtni 7. If.r, for stopping behind loading school buses. I finally inquired and found out it was legal to pass school buses in those states. I shudder to think what might happen to Colorado and Utah drivers who try that gambit in other states! I saw at least a half-dozen different types of high way centerhne markings ranging from nothing at all to a pair of solid lines sandwiching a dotted one. In some states, any line meant no passing; in some, there was a continuous center line with no markings for passing; in others, a continuous dotted line with sohd hues to indicate no passing. And so it went. True, it wns possible to make an educated guess as to what was indicated; but even working hard at it. I found my miosscs weren't always right. 1 disvovered the hard way- that most states do not permit pjirkinu on a bridge, even thoimh it's loyal in 21 other states. In one small Western town, I played footsie with a car facing me for several minutes when we both wanted to make a left turn-while other drivers blasted their horns behind us. I was trying to turn inside the intersection, as I had been taught to do. Hut such a turn was illegal in tins state, where loft turns an' made iiier crossing the intersection. iiNiv conilicting tratl'ie laws, but some state ami local orditigucos make cros.t-countrv driv ing' dangerous Mnny times these laws are sat'etv hazards Nvause they put such a mental bunion on the driver trying to kt op abreast of thorn that he diusn't pay sullicient attention to his driving New Yolk, for example, has a alt m p h. speed hunt throughout the sUUV whether the road is a four-lane expressway or a backwoods lane- and traffic laws there haven't been changed miiijj since 1!1L".I A study taken at 11 sites throughout the state bv the liurcau of Public Roads showed that more than half the drivers were exceeding the unrealistic speed limit most of them all the while watching in the rear-view mirror for pursuing police ears, thus in creasing the danger of an accident. A number of surveys have shown almost beyond question that realistic speed limits promote traffic safety. When the State of Washington raised th..' speed limit from 50 to 60 m.p.h. on several hundred miles of primary roads, fatalities on the highway de creased by 33 percent. St. Paul, Minn., raised the limit to 10 m.p.h. on a well-traveled street whole motoiists were consistently exceeding a 30-mile limit. Result: drivers obeyed the new speed law. and acci dents decreased considerably. How serious is all this? According to the Council of State Governments: "Out-of-state drivers are re sponsible for 20 percent or more of accidents in some stales- mainly tluough unfamiliarity with local driv itm habits and regulations." An official of the High way Transportation Congress estimates that unitied traffic laws could reduce accidents 30 percent. ( 'oNKt.H T1J.C. and foolish traffic laws aren't a now problem, but they are fast becoming a desperate one as the number of cars traveling cross-count : y increases almost as rapidly as their horsepower. UnrK -three years ago, Herbert Hoover sponsored 1 movement for nationwide uniformity of traffic ordi nances. Although progress has been made since tin n. we still have a long way to go. As Jung ;,go as W20. the National Conference or. Street and Highway Safety appointed n committee to loview tniffic laws and create uniform standa ds These model ordinances for both states and muiiu i palities have boon carefully and periodically brought' up to ,.n. since - and a new revision Ins ju-'
