The Speed Fiend and the Road Boss
As Benton County redraws its road districts, a local editor wants the men who maintain the roads given power to arrest the drivers tearing them up.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
For the benefit of those who wish to make known their ideas on subdividing the road districts between Kennewick and Hover, we publish the names of the committee of ten who are to confer with Commissioner Pratt on this subject: C. C. Cantwell and H. S. Hughes, Frank Struthers and J. R. Ayers, Frank Lyons and Frank Volland, C. E. Cox and Wm. Engels, W. H. Allison and I. N. Newkirk.
One suggestion we would like to make to Commissioner Pratt: When he selects his road foremen, each should be deputized to make arrests for speeding, for it is the speed fiend who does the most damage to our roads, not to mention the menace he is to anyone using the county highways. One of these undesirable citizens drove from a point 2,900 feet west of the S., P. & S. crossing to the crossing in 38 seconds, and we venture was going over forty miles an hour when he crossed the grade. Had anyone been on the grade approaching from the east, it would have been miraculous if one or the other had not been thrown down the steep bank into the ditch. Those who would show such utter disregard for the rights of others should be brought promptly to time, and old offenders should have their licenses revoked.
“When he selects his road foremen, each should be deputized to make arrests for speeding, for it is the speed fiend who does the most damage to our roads.”
Road safety and local control remain a familiar pairing: rural officials still debate whether the people maintaining roads should also police them, and speeding on country roads is still a live complaint. The 1917 call to give road foremen arrest powers sounds like an early version of modern traffic enforcement—and of the same tension between public safety and limited resources.
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