Public Safety, Arlington County Accident Mapping, School Safety, and Road Improvement Report, 1945

Virginia National Traffic Safety

Ephemera

Arlington County’s 1945 National Traffic Safety Contest report records how a rapidly motorizing Virginia jurisdiction measured and tried to reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage at the close of World War II. Submitted on March 8, 1946 to the Committee of Judges of the National Safety Council, the report is signed by Clifton G. Stoneburner as Traffic Engineer and H. L. Woodyard as Chief of Police, and it opens its statistical case with a “Motor Vehicle Death Record” listing 8 deaths in 1942, 3 in 1943, 7 in 1944, and 5 in 1945. The volume moves from those totals into the machinery of local safety administration through accident charts, a county engineering “Legend Used for Accident Location Spot Map,” school safety measures, bicycle registration forms, and before-and-after road and sidewalk improvements tied to Fairlington School, 16th Street South, North Edison Street, and access to Arlington Hospital and the Arlington County Health Center.

Arlington County, Virginia. Arlington, Virginia 1945 Report. National Traffic Safety Contest. Arlington, Virginia, submitted 1946. Black post-bound binder titled in gilt on upper cover, containing a substantial typed and illustrated report with mounted photographs, graphs, inserted printed ephemera, and tabbed sections. Over 100 pages. Named officials include Frank C. Hanrahan, County Manager; Clifton G. Stoneburner, Traffic Engineer; and H. L. Woodyard, Chief of Police, each represented by a mounted portrait. Contents documented in the photographed pages include Section “A” “Motor Vehicle Death Record,” comparative traffic accident charts for 1941-1945, a street-lighting chart running through the year ending June 30, 1947, accident-investigation photographs, sidewalk and curb construction comparisons, a Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles booklet titled Questions and Answers on the Motor Vehicle Code of Virginia, and Arlington County Police Department bicycle identification and bicycle registration cards. Public-facing safety devices are also preserved in the report’s photographic program, including a school crossing marker reading “School Drive Slowly” and a pedestrian warning message painted on the reverse of a traffic sign reading “Carry White at Night.”

The report belongs to a mid-century civic planning structure in which counties competed, counted, photographed, graphed, and standardized their safety work in order to show administrative control over the hazards created by rising automobile use. Arlington’s submission is thoroughly detailed, pairing fatality and injury curves with site-specific engineering interventions, police paperwork, school-zone warnings, and accident-location systems, so that traffic safety appears as a coordinated municipal program spanning roads, lighting, enforcement, and public instruction. Some toning to leaves, rubbing to the gilt cover lettering; photos and ephemera remain legible and clean. Overall very good condition. A detailed municipal record of how Arlington County translated accident statistics into engineering, enforcement, and school-safety policy in the first postwar year.l.

Item #23346

Price: $550.00