Thirty-One Charter Students Graduate From America's First Traffic School

To 31 men, who have completed the first year's training program in traffic research, Dr. Miller McClintock, director of the bureau, will stress today the need for skilled personnel as the solution for present highway traffic problems.

The graduating clean represents the product of the first full year's program of training in traffic engineering and administration ever given in any American university. Sixteen men were enrolled in the training program through fellowships made possible by a grant to the Bureau from the Automotive Safety Foundation representing the entire automobile industry.

Fifteen men entered the course without fellowships. The group represents almost every phase of street and highway management, including police enforcement, motor vehicle administration, driver psychology, education, highway planning and design and tra control engineering.

"The present need throughout the country," Dr. McClintock declares, "is evidenced by the fact that practically every one of the graduates of this year's course has been offered a traffic position in some city, county, state or federal agency. These men will bring to their positions, in addition to their fine back-ground training, a highly specialized knowledge of all of the various phases of traffic control and administration.

"The eagerness with which these men have been employed is significant of the need which exists. It is, furthermore, proof of the fact that public administrators are coming to recognize that the control of traffic is not a casual problem nor one which can be solved satisfactorily by untrained personnel. One of the most hopeful signs is the fact that a number of the graduates have been given positions in jurisdictions where they are not residents and where no conceivable political influence could have been brought to bear upon their selection.

"Although the Harvard Bureau has been conducting intensive research on all of the technical aspects of traffic accidents and congestions, for a period of more than ten years, it recognizes that neither it nor--the other agencies working upon the situation have done more than scratch the surface. It is true, however, that there is now available a relatively simple formula of education, enforcement and engineering which, properly applied by training personnel, can invariably reduce traffic accidents and increase traffic efficiency."

The graduating class has organized the "Harvard Traffic Associates," which is designed as a professional society to promote the advancement of sounder traffic practice.