The Safety Hoax

There was a day when a person could fall down a flight of stairs and break a leg in discrete privacy. A hundred years ago, accidents were accidents, and they were your own tough luck. Nobody cared, but at least you could keep your mishaps to yourself.

Nowadays, when every bent fender and skinned knee becomes a statistic, American look at things differently. Hundreds of posters warn Junior about leaving his roller skates on the stairs, and the man who keeps oily rags in his cellar is little better than a criminal. Under the aegis of the National safety Council, the mass media have combined to produce a state of safety pyschosis.

This week the safety hysteria reached a new pitch with the action of traffic officials in Westchester County, New York. In order better to propagate their gospel, they to make a short speech to each motorist as he drove up to the play booth. As they took the dime, they were to say, "This is president Eisenhower's safe driving day, so please be careful."

The Westchester appeal is a sorry infringement of the motorist's right of privacy. Aside from considerations of taste, it poses certain Constitutional questions. No one doubts that the Supreme Court would block any move of the Internal Revenue Department to print little mottoes at the bottom of its forms, like "A Family That Prays Together, stays Together." It seems unlikely that Westchester County has the right to sermon a similarly captive audience on the virtues of safety.

The implications of the Westchester episode are staggering. They open up a whole new field to aggressive advertising. For a certain consideration to the MTA, streetcar motormen could be instructed to stop each passenger as he pays his fare, sieze him by the lapels, and chant: "THROW AWAY YOUR DISH TOWELS! The Crossly Automatic Dishwasher-Drier Washes and Dries faster then any other Dishwasher," or some such maxim.

Neither the speed of the new Crossly dishwasher not the urgent need for safety warrants thins kind of breach of personal privacy. The insurance lobby has put one over on the American people this time. It may not find it so easy the next.