Word: frictions
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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This advice came from a large transport plane circling over Cook County. In it, getting a bird's eye view of the area, were a county highway chief and a local judge. When either of them spotted a traffic jam below or detected excessive road friction due to accident or highway construction, he spoke into a short-wave radio transmitter, ordered police-squad automobiles to the spot or offered advice directly to motorists by means of a rebroadcast by Station WBBM...
Called to Chicago in 1930 to study highway accidents, Dr. McClintock concluded that all accidents and congestion fit in four categories of friction: 1) medial, 2) intersectional, 3) marginal, 4) internal-stream. Medial friction occurs in the middle of the road of two opposing traffic streams, causes 17% of accidents, results in head-on collisions. Intersectional friction, which produces crossroad collisions, causes 19% of all highway accidents. Marginal friction (20%) is generated by bad road shoulders, abrupt curves, faulty banking and "fixed objects" such as trees, parked vehicles or pedestrians. Internal-stream friction (44%) is the conflict of faster...
...Less than 1% provide what experts now recognize as a fundamental necessity - automatic means to correct the driver's mistakes. Nearly 97% of the primary system, which today carries 65% of U. S. traffic, is two-lane high way, standard 15 years ago, substandard now. To cure medial friction state highway engineers invented the three-lane road. This proved the most murderous of all roads as drivers fought for the middle lane. Multi-lane roads lessened medial friction, but caused more internal-stream and intersectional crashes...
...four elements: 1) A dividing strip down the road's centre ; 2) over and underpasses with cloverleaf detours at every intersection; 3) denial to abutting property of direct access to the highway; 4) acceleration and deceleration lanes for fast and slow traffic. All four forms of friction are largely cured by these four elements. But few roads exemplify them all. One example is the Worcester (Mass.) Turnpike. It used an abandoned trolley right-of-way. Even so, the elaborate structure cost $239,000 per mile. This tremendous expense, dwarfing ordinary figures, is an effective hitch in the program...
...American run the earth. It was not lack of patriotism which lay behind the order to leave the American legation; it was experience of the history of more than one recent crisis and an exact knowledge of the unimportance of American interests and the importance of avoiding friction. The so-called "insult to the American flag" has served to prove not only the value of that experience, but also the unchanged sensationalism of American newspapers...