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Page # 1 By Senator Harry S. Truman lindep. april 18.1937 SPEECH BROADCAST THURSDAY, JANUARY TWENTY FIRST, 1937 FROM THE UNITED STATES SENATE. TO BE RELEASED AT 5:15 P.M. We are in the midst of the most useless, most reckless and un- necessary death rate from automobiles in our history. I want it stopped. One way to stop it is to take the crazy driver from behind the wheel of the car. and 4.000000 motory trucks There are more than 26,000,000 automobiles, in use in the United < States. In 1935 one million one hundred thousand drivers were involved in accidents. Thirty six thousand people were killed and 830,000 seriously injured, and more than a million minor ac- cidents were not reported. The property damage ran into ten figures. Every automobile driver should read an article pub- lished in the Readers' Digest last year called, AND SUDDEN DEATH. It vividly describes what takes place when cars collide and when a car hits a pedestrian. There are more innocent children kill- ed in America every year than have been injured by the bombing of Madrid, yet the bombing of the Spanish Capital seems atrocious to us, and it is. Twenty two States in the great Union are trying bravely to stop the useless and unnecessary slaughter by automobile drivers. These States require drivers' licenses with examination and severe punishment if a person attempts to drive who is not qualified. The other States allow any one who can get into a car to drive it. In Detroit when a careful survey of fatal automobile accidents was made it was found that 14% of these car fatalities were caused by insane drivers - not drunken drivers, but insane ones. Four-

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