Speed & Safety

Two knowing men last week tangled assertions as to what might be safe speeds for motor cars to operate.

Said Paul Hoffman, vice president in charge of sales and one of the four men who operate the great Studebaker Corp. and who are currently engaged in making Fierce-Arrow highly profitable : "Whether you like it or not, the public wants speed. . . . This Council can save lives by urging States to remove their maximum speed laws so that motorcycle policemen will stop chasing fast cars that are imperiling no one and devote themselves to removing the reckless driver from the highways." Said Louis Dublin, famed statistician of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. "That was the most outrageous talk I ever heard. Mr. Hoffman's doctrine is at the bottom of our troubles. I have known that automobile manufacturers had such thought in their hearts, but this is the first time I ever met one who dared to preach such a theory. There is no earthly reason for speed higher than 35 miles an hour. . . ." The National Safety Council, before whose Chicago meeting the two men spoke, could not of course change their points of view; could only deplore that of the 96,000 U. S. deaths by accident last year, 24,000 were due to accidents in homes, 24,000 in industries, 20,000 in public places other than on streets and highways, and the largest number, 27,500, by motor vehicles; could try to forestall their duplication.