Carolina Watchman

seems to be having some effect in reducing the number of fatal automobile accidents. We still have a long way to go before the menace to life, both to motorists and to pedestrians, is removed. But the figures for the first six months of 1936 show a considerable falling off from those of the corresponding period last year.

To be sure, the holiday vacation season is only just beginning. Nobody can predict what toll of lives will be taken during the Summer. There are more cars on the road than ever before, and they are driving at higher speeds. But on the other hand, most of these cars now in use are under better control than the two or three million antiquated rattle-traps with defective brakes that have at last been deposited in the junk yards and replaced by new cars with a much higher factor of safety.

It is not the cars themselves that are to blame for most traffic accidents. It is always the driver. In state after state more careful systems of examining drivers for competence are being adopted. No state as yet has gone as far as they go in England in the matter of revoking or suspending driving licenses of reckless and dangerous drivers, and nowhere are our main motor highways adequately policed.

Progress is being made, however, and the drive for highway safety is becoming both more concentrated and more widespread.

One point upon which greater and greater emphasis is being put is the slogan "Gasoline and liquor don't mix." Just what proportion of motor accidents are due to drunken drivers nobody has figured out, but there are plenty. Too many motorists over-estimate their own capacity for liquor. Driving a car while intoxicated ought to be classified among criminal offenses of major importance.