thur$daymay3, 1979
daily nebraskan
o)DDDDIjD
in the fast lane calls for safe-speed vehicles
G(oJia
Life on the highways Is back to being
cheap again. Last week, the Department of
Transportation reported that traffic deaths
topped 50,000 in 1978, the highest kill
rate since the imposition of the 55 miles
per hour limit in 1974. Federal officials
said that following a brief slowdown,
speed-fever again pushed up the death toll.
sQdoddd
In the West and Southwest, where floor
tag it to 70, 80 and 90 mph is almost a
religious act in worship of the great open
spaces, the gore jumped 28 percent be
tween 1975 and 1978. The statistic reveals
the blood-red truth of how the laws of the
highway mix with the laws of morality: the
faster you go, the more likely you will go.
With the country's momentary fling
with safety and sanity now over-even
then, the 55 mph limit was initially impos
ed to save fuel, not lives- any further
effort to reduce the carnage must move be
yond the useless "please drive safely"
approach.
Criminal act
The crime, wave on the roadways-to
violate the 55 mph limit is a criminal act
will never be stopped until the speed limit
is imposed on the vehicle, not the operator;
If drivers won't slow down, as the nation's
police and morticians know better than
anyone, then slow down the cars.
At first, the notion of vehicles with
engines designed, for a top speed of 55 mph
seems only a dream that Ralph Nader
might have on the best of days. It hasn't
been possible even to get automobile com
'panies to install bumpers with morelougth;
jiess than French pastry. -: ' " : r '
But with the Department of Transpor
tation now talking about "redesigning the
automobile" and creating cars that are
"socially responsible," it is the pragmatists,
not the dreamers who are coming forward.
Lead-foots
Kevin J. Murphy t the president of Con
tinental Trailways, recently asked the
federal government to require 55 mph
governors' on all interstate commercial
vehicles. Although the lead-foots of
Murphy's own company groused about the
idea, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration is currently seeking public
comment on the proposed rule.
Governors are useful but they are still
little more than check reins on wild horses.
The corrals of Detroit were on the mind of
William Haddon, M.D., the former federal
safety official who is the head of the In
surance Institute for Highway Safety.
. At a conference on advanced automo
tive technology, Haddon said . . . it is
imperative that we as a nation decide that
the built-in top speeds of vehicles about to
be planned for the 1985-2000 period be
lowered to a speed close to the present nat
ional speed limit.
Needless to say,; as an engineering
matter this has been inexpensively and en
tirely feasible for at least a decade using
approaches that In no way interfere with
performance at lower speeds.
of Detroit's speed message. Television com
mercials, picturing cars on test tracks in
high-speed "performance drills, suggest
that all of America is now the Bonnevile
Flats.
As victims of this speed promotion,
safety-conscious citizens lose several ways.
They risk being killed by the maniac
criminals going over 55, they are paying for
horsepower they don't want, they are
forced to pay higher taxes for police
departments that must waste their time on
speeders rather than other social menaces,
they risk losing family members-especially
teen-aged drivers-in high-speed crashes.
This isn't the first time that rational
thoughts of safe-speed vehicles have sur
faced. In 1971, NHTSA proposed design
controls. But three out of four of the
American car makers opposed them, with
the fourth (GM) raising the standard
spector of "higher costs." Fiat of Italy,
twisting logic like spaghetti, said slow
traveling becomes tedious."
That argument, and others of stupefy
ing crassness, carried the day. Since then,
about: 400 jDOO Americans have died in
traffic, with somd 5 million seriously injur
ed. As the most abused machine of the
20th century, the automobile was built-in
speed assures more built-in death.
Copyright 1979, The Washington Post Co.
Past songs and souls ripple life's ' waters
and it comes and it goes
and it rolls and it flows '
rolls and flows
through the holes in the pockets
of my clothes
-Bob Dylan
Somewhere along the line we all got
drenched to the bone, and have never quite
shaken the chill. It flickers inside like the
4Ights-irFa storm, reminding you that al
though you're safe and warm, somewhere
t put&de it's, rainingi - -
It's the reigning law of transition. No
matter how smoothly you think you
segue into the inevitable changes, mere's
always a piece of the things that came be
fore lodged somewhere in your system. If
they seem to surface at odd times, it's only
because echoes have a habit of doing mat.
Not because you would have planned it
that way .
In Wrapping up and packing away the
column this week, I feel a real need to
touch the various people who have laced
these pages in one way or another in the
past several years, but nothing comes. I've
been sitting here for several hours watch
ing the people come and go, occasionally
exchanging a smile, but mostly engaging
in a quiet sort of battle to catch eye '
contact with somebody. I'm not sure what
I'm looking for there, but I know it has to
come.
Echoes of the unsaid
Across from me, hunched over a type
writer with an unlit cigarette dangling from
her mouth, is a woman who has been on
the periphery of my stay here at the paper.
We've never been very close, but I've al
ways respected her honesty and her
abilities to care and to cope. I've always
felt comfortable calling her a friend. That's
a word I don't use much, and have prob
ably never said in her presence. She's
leaving for an out-of-state job at the end of
next week, and suddenly I lack the words
to say to her too. It's not because there is
nothing to say. The worst types of echoes
are of the things never said.
To the dead we've never quite buried,
there is a real feeling of grief for those un
said things.
I guess I've got time for one more story
before I close this off, and the only thing
that comes to mind isn't even much of a
.story. It's more of an isolated moment in
the flow of things. The woman involved
has been dead now for almost two years.
Early and eerie
Underneath Heppner and Love Halls in
the Niehnrdt Residential Center, is an un
derground tunnel connecting the two. Be
cause of the age of the Center, you get the
feeling when walking down there that you
have stepped back 50 years in time. This is
intensified at three In the morning to the
point that the isolation .closes in on you,
and it is almost timeless.
. . ' -- ,
When the mornings would wear on, I
would Walk the halls and sort things out as
best I ctJuld. One mornings I heard some
thing "waft, from the stairwells that was as
beautiful as it was eerie. As I got closer, I
could discern that the , sound was a blues
harp. Not only a blues harp, but the very
best blues harp that I had ever heard. It
was an unearthly and almost mystic wail
that came from very deep inside someone.
I stood around the corner and listened for
a long time. I was transfixed, and almost
afraid to move around the corner because
of the very real fear lhat there would be
nothing there. I eventually rounded the
comer, moved by a different set of feet,
and stood face to face with the only wo
man I had been dating for . over a year.
She . dropped the harp into her bag. The
music was her own, and as secret and as
private as anything you could imagine. It
was an unspoken thing. As far as I know,
she never played for anyone else for any
length of time, and I never brought it up
again. I hadn't known she had played.
Neither have I ever forgotten the song.
mm
Detroit's type
"If Haddon's thinking-intelligent and
humane-sounds strange, it Is because the
' ears of the ptblic are dinned with the hype
t ,The NU Board of Regents have already
approved a 9,000 seat addition to Memori
al Stadium and, although students will not
benefit from it, they will almost certainly
pay for It. The projected cost of the stad
ium expansion, which will reach as high as
tenth floor Oldfather, U $5.6 million plus
interest expenses' and it may go even
higher ; ' "
The regents propose to pay for this
folly, not only with revenue produced by
the addition, but with money from t sur
charge on other seats as well. Financing
construction with money generated from
sources external to the addition itself is
deceptive. It makes the addition appear less
expensive than it really is and it fails to
consider the value of the alternative pro
grams which this extra money could pro
vide for.
If the stadium expansion were to be
self4uficient, that is if it were to pay back
the $5.6 million and interest on its own, it
would take several centuries to pay itself
off. The 9,000 seats at $9.25 per seat
would generate $374,625 R2,uaiIy (from
three and a half conference games and half
the take on two non-conference tames
each year) while interest costs of 6.5 per
cent would run $364,000 annually. Simple
addition proves that the stadium expansion
is terribly uneconomical to say the least.
The only way the regents can pay for
the new addition is by generating extra
revenue. The primary source of this extra
money would be a $1 surcharge on regular
'seats which would raise an average of at
least $325 J000 annually.
Instead of manipulating this money to
pay for an expansion that is too costly to
pay for itself, It could be used advan
tageously to . replace the proposed
$357,269 of state tax money hich will be
used to finance next year's women s atn
letic program. .
- : Continued caps; 5