Here’s how a DC newspaper covered traffic safety just before World War II

In the years leading up to World War II, traffic safety became a major issue. The defunct Washington Evening Star newspaper ran a series of punchy, illustrated columns called “Why Must They Die?” which brought the topic to the public and revealed assumptions behind traffic safety programs from that time.

On January 10th, 1939, the series began:

The place: Sixth and F Streets N.E.

The accident: A 24-year-old-bakery truck driver. “A” was crushed when his truck, going north on Sixth street, overturned after a collision with another truck, driven by “B,” and going west on F Street. Witnesses said A’s truck was struck near the center of the intersection and turned over two or three times, coming to a stop at the northwest corner of the intersection. A’s body fell clear of the wreckage near the northwest curb. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Casualty Hospital. B was uninjured.

The time: 2:30 p.m., January 7.

Weather conditions: Clear.

The street: Dry.

The Vehicle: Both trucks reported in good condition. Witnesses testified that neither vehicle [was] traveling at a high rate of speed. A traffic officer testified that it was impossible for “B” to use his emergency brake because of a large carton placed on the floor by the driver’s seat.

The driver: Twenty-eight years old, with 12 to 15 years experience as a driver. Helped remove victim from wreckage.

Coroner’s jury verdict: Driver held for Police Court action under the Negligent Homicide Act.

General: Victim survived by widow and baby daughter.

The column, relating the death of David Gibbons three days earlier, was the first of at least 100 between January 10, 1939 and December 28, 1942. They were all written to emulate police incident reports.

The terse style reminds me also of hardboiled detective fiction, which combined with the illustrations, suggests the authors were trying to reach a wide audience as traffic violence was a huge problem.

Accepting the automobile, but trying to control its dangers

Deaths and injuries surged with the widespread adoption of the automobile in the 1920s. As shown by Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic, communities first tried to harshly restrict cars in cities. But pressure from manufacturers and motor lobbyists pushed the idea of “traffic control,” whereby the “Three Es” of Education, Engineering, and Enforcement could permit automobiles to operate safely in cities.

A proponent of this approach named F. M. Kreml outlined each element in a 1939 opinion piece: “Enforcement means strict administration of the traffic laws… Education means the pressing need for information and training in safety… Engineering means eliminating the physical hazards and danger points.”

In late-30s DC, engineering entailed widening streets, grade separation at traffic circles, a bypass highway through Georgetown, and pedestrian islands. Islands seemed particularly important to engineers at the time because passengers still entered and exited streetcars in the center of the road.

Indeed, streetcar loading areas were a frequent site of collisions. Less expensive than rebuilding roads was enforcement via revision of the laws, the criminalization of jaywalking, and the investigation of crashes. Education, then, had to show the risks of different forms of transportation, and how to safely navigate the city in different modes. That’s where the “Why Must They Die?” column fit in.

The series had three year-in-review articles in 1940, 1941, and 1942, plus a few quarterly features. The articles listed all of the fatalities and provided an analysis with infographics. They portray a picture of streets where most people still took streetcars — and horses showed up every once in a while.

Notably, the Evening Star’s practice at the time —when racial segregation in Washington was at its peak — was to note the race of African Americans and Chinese Americans after their name, e.g. “George Pettusion, 43, Colored.” Usually the name is given without the race if the person is white. Despite computing many statistics on the fatalities, the authors do not analyze racial differences in impact.

The series does highlight the vulnerability of older people. It also assigns more culpability for unsafe driving and shows how The Metropolitan Police Department seems to have supported the column, with at least one author joining their traffic bureau as a public relations officer. DC officials, who maintained a cozy relationship with the Star, praised the articles, as well.

We can also see the anti-pedestrian biases in the articles that would lead to a century of unsafe streets. For example, the 1939 year-in-review noted that pedestrians represented 66 of 85 fatalities, but the article chose to focus on the minority of those 85 deaths that involved pedestrians crossing mid-block. Ignoring any evidence about driver behavior, the director of highways used this framing to advocate for making “jaywalking” between intersections illegal in DC. Control of pedestrian movements, not driver responsibility, was synonymous with safety.

There is also no discussion of whether the vehicles themselves were designed in a dangerous way, or lacked safety features, as activists like Ralph Nader would point out in the 1960s. So, in the case above, there is no investigation of why a low-speed collision caused a truck to roll over three times. Irrespective, the year-in-review piece shows the driver was acquitted.

Interest in the column faded after the United States entered into World War II. But the lessons it taught were taken as conventional wisdom on the other side of the conflict. Likewise, 1930s traffic solutions like the Dupont Circle underpass, the widening of 6th Street in Shaw, and the Whitehurst Freeway were shovel-ready when the war ended and came to define the postwar era in transportation.

Here are a few more installments:

You can search for the installments yourself, on Chronicling America, a historic newspaper service from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.