The Salt Lake Tribune Thursday Morning, June 23, 1955 Fast Cars Plus Fast Drivers Equal Death Faced with a more than one a day traffic death record since May 29, the Utah Highway Patrol Tuesday vowed to carry on an intensified enforcement campaign during the summer with emphasis on curtailment of excessive speed. Patrol Superintendent Hyatt said all analysis indicates that too much speed is the cause of the high death toll. It isnt only, said Mr. Hyatt, that there are more speeders, but there is more speed too. Arrest tickets used to show 70 miles per hour, he declared. But now speeding charges of 80 and 90 miles an hour are not unusual and we have caught some cars doing over 100. Anyone who has driven at all extensively over highways in Utah (and elsewhere in the nation too, for that matter) knows that there is far too much speed. If you drive at the legal top limit of 60 miles an hour in Utah on main highways, car after car will zip past you at speeds ranging up to 90 miles an hour. One trouble is that modern cars are built with such high engine performance that it is too easy to drive too fast. Unless one watches the speedometer carefully even a cautious driver soon finds himself traveling not just over 60 miles an hour, but over 80. And there is the temptation to the more adventurous or, perhaps we should say, foolhardy drivers to push the speedometer needle up and up to that enticing 100, 110 or 120 m.p.h. figure which the manufacturer has so challengingly put on the dial. But it isnt just the fault of high speed cars. It takes a human and mechanical combination to break through the speed deathtrap barrier and while there is little chance of doing anything to control the mechanical menace of excessive speed potential, we can do something to control the human menace of excessive speed reality. And the way to do it is by more enforcement and more severe punishment. Unfortunately we are handicapped from a man power standpoint in accomplishing this goal. One can drive for miles in Utah without seeing a highway patrol car. It isnt because the men are loafing on the job, but because we simply do not have enough to maintain an efficient around the clock, seven day a week, 52 weeks a year patrol. Come July 1 there will be some improvement in this situation. Ten more uniformed men will be added to the Highway Patrol as a result of a budget increase voted by the last Legislature, and four radar devices to trap speeders electronically will be put in use. This isnt nearly enough in the way of an expanded patrol, and in the establishment of an effective radar speed control system. But it is a start. We hope the 10 additional men will be utilized to man the radar units on major highways, roving around the state so that the effect of this extra speed control activity will be widely felt. And we hope our courts will co operate by accepting without question the electronic evidence and handing out the kind of certain, swift and severe punishment which alone will slow down these speed mad drivers. On Memorial Day Utah along with the rest of the nation started a summer long Slow Down and Live campaign, aimed at reducing the usual summertime keavy fatality toll which results chiefly from too much high speed driving. So far Utah motorists seem to have taken the campaign as a challenge to do just the opposite, killing seven over the Memorial weekend and 20 since, for an appalling toll of 27 dead in 25 days. Plainly it will take something more than slogans or talk to reverse this tragic trend. Experience proves there is only one thing that will do the job enforcement and more enforcement. We wish the Highway Patrol success in its effforts in that direction. But we wish also that they had doubled the number of men so they could do the kind of effective life saving job which needs to be done.