Word: mcclintock
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...more, with a total property loss of some $1,600,000,000. One of the first to see that this carnage and waste on the highways was not due to a flock of local factors but to a few basic inefficiencies was a young Leland Stanford graduate named Miller McClintock...
Making traffic control the subject of his thesis at Harvard in 1924, red-headed Miller McClintock became the first man ever awarded a doctorate in traffic. Two years later, when Studebaker Corp. offered to finance a Harvard traffic bureau, Dr. McClintock was put in charge. Supported now by the Automobile Manufacturers Association, the Bureau and its chief are recognized as the No. 1 U. S. authority on traffic control, have produced a complete new theory of highway troubles. Says Dr. McClintock: "If we could apply all we know, we could eliminate 98% of all accidents, practically all congestion...
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...
There are, according to Dr. McClintock, three fronts on which to attack this simplified accident picture-driver, automobile, road. The shortcomings of the nation's 40,000,000 drivers cause most accidents, but experts agree that it is hopeless to expect "voluntary rehabilitation." The driver must be externally restrained from killing himself. Against the overwhelming U. S. urge to go places fast, the idea of speed governors for automobiles has made no progress. Even if it did, it would do little good, for only 9% of all accidents are directly attributable to speeds of 50 m.p.h. or more. Structurally...
...driver. Of the 3,000,000 miles of U. S. rural road, backbone is the state system of 324,000 miles of primary highways, of which only one-half is hard surface, between towns. Usually considered the world's finest network, it is really, according to Expert McClintock, an inadequate, unscientific hodgepodge. Sole idea behind most of the system was to have bigger, harder roads. These inevitably caused more accidents. 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...