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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 18, 1958)
the BATTALION Published Daily on the Texas A&M College Campus Number 53: Volume 58 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1958 Price Five Cents Deadly Odds Face Ag Motorists Texans Crusade to -¥■ * ' ¥ Hold Deaths Under 103 Year’s Toll' Already 238 Below 1957 With some 238 lives al ready saved in Texas this year through Dec. 5, Gov. Price Daniel’s statewide traffic safety crusade is being con ducted with an all out drive to reduce the year-end holiday death toll on Texas streets and highways. Objective will bo to hold this year’s holiday toll below 103, the number of lives lost during the 11-day “Operation Deathwatch” maintained by the Department of Public Safety during the 1957 Christmas-New Year’s period. Good December Record The DPS Statistical Service re ports that the 218 persons killed in December, 1957, was the smallest number for any December in nine years. The nine-year average for December is 255. If the present trend continued the governor points out, then the major im provement noted thus far this year can be maintained. Several powerful forces will unite their efforts in the climaxing traffic safety project of 1958, a year which thus far has seen mo torcades drop 10 per cent from the 1957 toll. That 10 per cent reduc tion has been the governor’s year long goal. “Safety Sunday” Governor Daniel proclaimed “Safety Sunday” for the December holidays this year at the request of Rev. Don Benton of Dallas, Chairman of Church Safety for the Texas Safety Association. In his official proclamation, the governor suggested that Texas clergymen include traffic safety in their pre- Christmas messages and urged citizens of the State to “join in this united religious campaign to awaken in the conscience and mind of every driver the realization that negligence at the wheel of an auto mobile is a transgression of God’s own command, ‘Thou. Shalt Not Kill’.” A Christmas traffic safety re minder has been issued to the public through the cooperation of every billboard company in Texas. Officials of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Texas, Inc., announced that members of their organization has pledged 976 billboards—about one out of every 20 in the State—to carry the gov ernor’s traffic safety Christmas re minder. The big, 24-sheet bill board’s, signed by the governor and carrying his full-color photo, fea ture a personal statement, reading: “Don’t Let A Collision Spoil Your Ploliday.” Companies Lauded Expressing his appreciation to the companies for their coopera tion, Governor Daniel said: “We are very grateful for the huge amounts of time and money de voted to the traffic safety crusade by the billboard companies and other mass communications media in Texas, daily and weekly news papers, press associations, radio and TV stations and movie thea tres. Without this vast array of help, we could never have made so much progress this year. We now hope for major improvement in the annual December-New Year’s death toll because of this type of cooperation and because so many Texans this year are working to help save the lives of their fellow- citizens.” TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE. . . Panel Leads Meeting On Corps Scholastics A panel of seven college offi cials conducted an experiment yes terday to see if some good could come from a joint-meeting of Corps scholastic officers and their faculty adviser’s. Speeding Costlier In Safety, Money Ags who plan to zoom down the highway over the speed limit Fri day so they can get home a little earlier are just kidding themselves They should notice the results of an experiment performed in Kan sas. Two drivers participated in a road test on a 295-mile stretch of highway in Kansas under typical driving ’ conditions with the fol lowing x’esults: No. Elapsed Top Speed Aver. Cars Driv. Reached Speed Passed injc Time Driver A 65 46 126 6 hrs. 25 min. Driver B 50 43 62 6 hrs. 50 min. Driver A saved only 25 minutes in nearly 300 miles; he passed twice as many cars, each being a potential accident, used 11 per cent more gasoline and 50 per cent more oil. Representatives from the 53 units in the Corps and advisors met in the Biological Sciences Lec ture Room yesterday afternoon for an hour-long discussion. In expressing his opinion on the returns of mid-semester grades, Vice President Earl Rudder said: “We are grateful for the actions taken by faculty members in aid ing Corps units and we are also grateful for the work students have done to help. “Faculty advisors have done ex cellent jobs, above and beyond regular duty. We thank them for their leadership.” The overall purpose of the joint meeting was to give students and advisers an opportunity to see what each other are doing and also to give them a chance to ask mem bers of the panel questions con cerning various phases of the scholastic program. “It is quite significant that few Guide Posts . . . Am I my brother’s keeper? —Gen. 4:9 er students are failing, Page said. “There are about eight per cent less flunks this year than last.” Rudder reported that only 176 students have resigned from the Corps this year as compared with 283 at this time last year. One Corps officer asked how much the flu epidemic played in the number of flunking students last year. C. H. Ransdell, associate dean of the Basic Division, answered the question by saying that two per cent more freshmen were un der a C average last year than in 1956-57. Jack Kent, associate professor of mathematics and adviser to Squad ron 8, revealed that after a tho rough study and comparison soph omores are carrying the heaviest load of the four classes. College administrators who sat on the panel were Page; Rudder; Col. Joe E. Davis, commandant; Lt. Col. Taylor Wilkins, assistant commandant; Col. Jack H. Remele, Corps scholastic advisor; Ransdell; and John R. Pedigo, associate professor of petroleum engineering and a unit advisor. Experts Predict Holiday Death By JOHNNY JOHNSON Battalion News Editor The deck is stacked against motoring Ags this holiday period—they’re no deathless hands in the deck—Sgt. O. L. Luther, head of the local Texas Highway Patrol office, warned yesterday. “They just can’t beat the tremendous odds for the third year in a row—it’s almost impossible,” Luther said. Chief of Campus Security Fred L. Hickman joined Luther in a grim forecast: “I always dread the holiday period. It’s always my fear that some Ag won’t be around for the resumption of classes.” The last time any Ag was killed in a car accident dur ing the Christmas holidays was in 1955, when two students were killed near La Grange on their way home for the ■ Christmas recess. Last year Gov. Price Daniel lauded A&M’s record during the 1956 Christmas holidays for its two deathless years. No Ags were killed during the last Yule season. Don’t let this record cause a lull in awareness,” Luther warned. “It will be a miracle if it happens again.” Statistics from last year’s fatal traffic accidents—in which 2,539 persons died needlessly—show that everything is against the Ags. In 1957 more than 20 per cent of all persons killed in automobile accidents were between the ages of 18 and 22,, yet this group rep resents only 10 per cent of the state’s drivers. Also last year 61 per cent of all fatal accidents occurred between noon and midnight—the time most Ags will be heading home. Students represented six per cent of 1957’s highway fatalities. Passenger cars are involved in 75 per cent of fatal accidents— most Ags will travel in such cars. Add to this that 57 per cent of highway fatalities are caused by speeding and 34 per cent involve driving while drinking and the true dark picture begins to take form, Luther gloomily warned. An Editorial Christmas ’57 Passed Without Aggie Fatality Aggies beat the odds and cheated death last year in that not one of them was killed in an automobile accident during the Christmas holi day period. How fortunate will they be this holiday period? Already in 1958 automobile ac cidents at A&M have taken one life, and injured others. Still fresh on the minds of all Aggies is the two-car collision Nov. 16, in Plantersville, 15 miles west of Navasota which took the life of Calvin Reed, English instructor. Three students were injured. The fh’st fatality of 1958 came Jan. 13, when Dr. Hubert Schmidt, a former veterinary medicine au thority, died in the hospital from injuries received in an auto crack- up. An Aggie and a Montgomery couple «were hospitalized Oct. 26, when their cars collided headon on Highway 6. Test of a Lifetime A moment of carelessness—a second of inatten tion to the job of guiding a ton of swift-moving, death-dealing steel will spoil Christmas holidays for the men of Aggieland. Driving is serious business yet we seldom drive as if our very life depended on it. And yet it truly does. Driving an automobile is an examination for which there is no makeup; mistakes count off not in points but injuries and lives. Drinking is no way to “cram” for this test' of a lifetime. Statisticians have predicted more than 100 Tex ans’ lives will be wasted during the 11-day holiday. They could be wrong but not unless every driver takes care not to crash the Christmas party. Death on the highway has not marred Christmas at Aggieland for the past two years. But odds are alarmingly increasing against making 1958 the third deathless year in a row. Those odds are stacked against every Ag motorist. They’re stacked against you. A moment of carelessness—a second of inatten tion to the job of driving will transform the trip home to one out of this world. Let us pray that no Texas Aggies will fail the test of a lifetime this Christmas. No one is immune to death on the asphalt, strip. Only by the grace of God and by the use of in telligence He gave us can we hope to avoid having our lives snuffed out.