The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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HYDE PARK—An appeal comes to me to advise people who drive their autos during the holiday season that fatigue, drowsiness and lack of alertness are major causes of traffic accidents.

The roads are evidently going to be slippery, and this adds to the ease with which traffic accidents occur, so here are the safety rules for this year:

1. Accidents drop when speed drops. Keep an eye on the speedometer and remember you don't have to drive the limit, especially in bad weather.

2. On long trips, stay alert by stopping every two hours for a coffee break and have a cup or two of coffee before driving home from a late party.

3. Don't drive after over-celebrating. Drinking drivers account for more than half of all fatal year-end holiday accidents.

4. On city streets, be especially wary of pedestrians who also have a responsibility to be more than usually cautious.

5. Live and let live. Throughout the holidays and throughout the year, remember when behind the wheel you are your brother's keeper.

The above rules are, of course, an advertisement for coffee as a preferable stimulant to alcohol, but advertisement or not, they are wise suggestions and should be followed, particularly by the young, who without knowing it sometimes reach the point of exhaustion and go to sleep when they haven't the slightest realization that sleep is descending upon them.

I saw a story the other day about a group of people who were driving in a bus in Yugoslavia who suddenly realized that their driver was sound asleep with his chin resting on his chest. Their shouts aroused him just before a steep turn on a mountain road where they might easily have gone over a precipice. So sometimes sleep is overpowering, even when the road is a dangerous road and we know it.

Good luck and safe driving throughout the holidays!

I wonder how many people who live in New York City or other cities throughout the country are conscious of the fact that zoning is an important part of modern planning. In New York, we have had no new code since 1916, and at that time ours was the first code in the whole country. But it doesn't fit modern conditions and we need a new code.

The whole architectural profession of New York and the five chapters of the American Institute of Architects and the two Societies of Architects have just taken a firm stand there in favor of new zoning and have announced this as their intention: "Fight the good fight to see that this city gets new zoning."

What is happening in your city or town?

There will be a struggle in New York, of course, because there are always special interests involved and no one likes regulation. But the individual citizen has to submit to regulation for the public good, and that is what those who are proposing the new code are thinking about.

E. R.

(Copyright, 1959, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 26, 1959

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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