Appendix

Epilogue: The Changing Federal Role

A New President

Chapter 4: The Federal Role in Highway Safety

BPR's Report to Congress

Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, who had served as Secretary since the start of the Eisenhower Administration on January 21, 1953, left office on November 10, 1958.

Three days later, Lewis L. Strauss became Secretary.

Chapter 3: Maintaining The Focus

Gimmicks and Panaceas

In 1956, some consideration was given to holding a third S-D Day. The Traffic and Transportation Conference of the National Safety Council, meeting in February in Cincinnati, Ohio, voted to make the month of December a period of special emphasis. This vote was based on the conclusion that S-D Day 1956 had a favorable effect. During the emphasis period, S-D Day reversed the unfavorable trend of the previous 8 months, while accidents increased sharply immediately for the remainder of December.

Chapter 2: A Crusade for Safety

The Federal System

When President Eisenhower took office on January 20, 1953, he had many issues to confront, particularly the Korean War, which ended in July 1953. But first, the Nation's Governors wanted to raise an issue that they thought the new President would be sympathetic to: the balance between State and Federal authority. This issue had been at the heart of the American political debate since before the drafting of the Constitution, but had taken on new life during the aggressive Presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) and Harry S. Truman (1945-1953).

Chapter 1: President Harry S. Truman's Highway Safety Conferences

President Truman and the Action Program

President Harry S. Truman, who had been a road builder as a young man and an avid motorist his whole life, had also been concerned about the growing traffic safety problem-and with good reason.

Introduction

by
Richard F. Weingroff
Research Assistant from Sonquela "Sonnie" Seabron

Preface

This monograph began as a sidebar to my two-part article, "The Man Who Changed America," in Public Roads magazine (March/April 2003 and May/June 2003). In "President Eisenhower on Highway Safety," I intended to quote from several of the President's speeches on the subject to supplement the other online sidebars I had written to elaborate on the President's interest in highways.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Federal Role in Highway Safety

Table of Contents

by
Richard F. Weingroff
Research Assistant from Sonquela "Sonnie" Seabron

Preface

Introduction

Ask the Rambler: Did the Highway Lobby Stop Congress from Funding Transit Instead of the Interstate System in 1956?

If you've read an anti-sprawl book, you've read the horror story: the evil Highway Lobby (motto: Let's Pave Over America) tricked Congress in 1956 into building Interstate highways instead of providing aid to transit as Congress otherwise would have done-thereby forcing people who longed for...