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ABROAD research program in the field of highway safety has been in progress at the Harvard School of Public Health during the past six years. These studies were initiated by the American Trucking Associations, Inc., the National Association of Motor Bus Operators, and the National Association of Automotive Mutual Insurance Companies. Since 1951 the Commission on Accidental Trauma of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, Department of Defense has sponsored research on the human factors in vehicular accidents at Harvard and at a number of other universities and research institutions. Thus far the research program has stressed basic causes in the areas of: 1. Identifying traits of personality and behavior which lead to repeated errors. 2. Defects in the design of equipment (human engineering). 3. Injuries and fatalities resulting from vehicular crashes. 4. Mathematical studies of the various interrelationships of contributory causes in accidents.

BIOLOGY, engineering, and the social sciences must work together, the author says, toward preventing passsenger-car accidents. He compares deaths and injuries from motor-vehicle accidents with the effects of mass disease-and calls the epidemiological approach used in disease study the most logical way of analyzing complex causes of accidents in terms of the interactions between the driver, the vehicle, and the environment of driving. The author reports the many exhaustive studies of what makes an accident, then points out that efforts to improve driver, vehicle, or roads must always begin with human physical and mental characteristics and limitations firmly in mind.