At Home on the Road: Women's Community Organizations and Traffic Safety Regulation in the 1950s
1. A T H O M E O N T H E R O A D :
W O M E N ’ S C O M M U N I T Y
O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D T R A F F I C
S A F E T Y R E G U L A T I O N I N T H E
1 9 5 0 S
R E N É E B L A C K B U R N * A H A 2 0 1 7 * 8 J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7
2. “I should like to say,
however, that you
perhaps more than any of
us have contributed to
what progress we have
been able to make in the
field of traffic safety and in
your support of the
President’s Committee.”
LBJ Presidential Library
T . S . P E T E R S O N , P R E S I D E N T
S T A N D A R D O I L C O .
3. ...how the Action Program fit
into transportation policy,
focused on citizen
engagement, and the ways in
which women's community
organizations influenced and
used the Action Program in
their work.
LBJ Presidential Library
5. • Education
• Driver’s Training
• Safety Education
• Enforcement
• Police & Courts
• Traffic Law
• Engineering
• Traffic Signs
• Road Development
G. Donald Kennedy, Bentley Historical Library, UM
6. – A C T I O N P R O G R A M , 1 9 4 9
“In highway safety, the individual is supreme. He can, by
his act in the fraction of a second, either fulfill the
mandate to be a safe highway user or nullify the effort
which has been expended to safeguard lives and
property. There is no substitute for individual caution, and
no excuse for individual carelessness.”
These are from two booklets called Crazy Drivers and Wacky Pedestrians, each making alliterative stereotypes of driver and pedestrian behavior that is both outlandish but, in a way, familiar. Also, if any of you are familiar with Boston drivers, Herbert Hornblower may seem familiar even in the present.
I actually have a third image from this comic that I didn’t use that shows a child lecturing his friends with a chalkboard easel drawing of a car hitting a stick figure child in the background, it says “all little kids who play in the street sooner or later get knocked off their feet!”