Upon reading microfilmed copies of the Registers of the 1960s and 1970s, as I have been doing to update our Annals of Iola and Allen County, one is struck by the number of fatal car accidents there were in those decades. It was a rare week when a Register front page failed to report a fatal or serious injury accident involving area drivers and their passengers.
Those tragedies were as frequent across the nation as they were here.
A compilation in the “Highway and Motorway Fact Book” that covered the 40 years from 1957 to 1997 showed that the number of traffic deaths…
US highways get safer every year
