"Fool'em out of Danger."

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 November 1911, Page 4

"Fool'em out of Danger."

.' r^.;~. — -, A .N'BW MOVEMENT TO PROTECT THE FOOLISH AGAINST THEMSELVES. The "fool 'em out of danger" movement ,has spread to almost ovory city of size in America, and it is saving lives in a great variety of ways. . , Those who are in the. mlovement work on tho assumption that every member of tho public is a fool of some w>rt, cannot be trusted at largo, and must be saved from 'tho consequences of his own foolishness. Therefore the heads of municipal departments in New York, Chicago and Cleveland have been prevailed upon to study the particular brands of foolishness that prevail in their particular cities and to guard against thorn. There nro two secrets in the "fool 'em out of dinger" movement. Ono is 'that, whi'o all men—and women— •are fools, they are not all.the same kinds of fools. For example, the didn't-know-it-was-loaded man must not be confounded with, the man who touched tho "livo" wire to mako sure it. really was "live", and gained nothing from the experience, being himself dead before the intelligence had time to do him any good. Not tor worlds would the didn't-know-it-was-loaded) man touch a

"live" wire. Neither would a, "live"-wire toucher fool round with, a gun. They jire different kinds of fools.

'Mr Herman Bachr, tho Mayor of Cleveland, who is enthusiastically convinced that all men specialise in foolishness, and is therefore in one forefront of the movementj says' he used to know a, man who invented a g:ato for level railroad crossings, besides being a olever inventor, this miin was also a profound student of human nature, and ho knew that many humans experience a strong impulse to risk being chopped into salad bite by driving their motor curs or horses over railway lines in front of moving trains. So he invented tho gatOj which very effectively keeps folks off the lines when tra ings are passing and so saves many lives. "fiut," says Mr Baehr, "one day this > man took his wife and family rowing in a- small boat on Lake Erie. Just for fun lie rocked the boat, and the lot were drowned.' . The second secret in the movement is that the public must not know that they are being protected —at least the American public must not—because if they do iknow, they will do.tJieii:.best.io circumvent the ■authorities and' get themselves kiled through foolishness. The aim is .to play up to the vanity and' curiosity of tho public, and to appeal to their inner-consciousness.

Every street, car in Chicago has niirrow mi the back platform. Those mirrows are an appeal to tho vanity of the public—especially to tho feminine half. The Chicago woman, when she leaves a car to go shopping or calling or to the theatre finds a mi rrow hung on the corner of tho cars, on a level with her head. She glances into it as site steps off the car, and knows instantly if her hai ris tidy and her hat on straight. She doesn't know she is being saved from injury and possibly death.

The American woman has an incurable penchant for alighting from a car or omnibus backwards. For years the authorities have posted signs on the cars appealing to women to "Face the Front of the Cais whon Alighting." To no purpose. They turned their backs towards Aiq front of the cars, and so, if the car 'happened to be moving, they somersaulted on to the back of their neck, and then there was work for tho ambulances, the police surgeons and tho insuranco agents. The little mirrows lvav© changed all that. It is not through humanitarian motives that the authorities of Chicago have insisted upon the cars being equipped with mirrors so that women passengers can tidy up their hair before leaving. It is because women cannot look "nto the,mirrows without facing the front of tho car.

Accident statistics show that, whereas nine out of every ten women in Chicago got off cars backwards before the introduction of the mirror, now only ono in 500 commits this particular act of fook'shness.

In Cleveland, which is known as the City of Fads, they have adopted two accident-preventing devices which appeal to one's unconscious self.

■ Every office building in that city ■which is provided with a lift must have on the threshold of every floor a row of lights under studs of glass, when the lift stops at a floor an electric connection is automatically made which turns on the lights under the feet of the people entering or leaving *he lift. The lights are many-coloured and flash, and go out and flash again, like the lights in an electric advertising sign. This is a, simple psychological method of tooling 'om out of danger." The Mt passenger, who before blundered •blindly _in or out, and often stumbled and fell because the operator had not stopped the lift on an exact lovel with the floor, now watches his feet—not because ho is a, careful body, but because the protty .Lights have attracted hi sattention. ino otku- Cleveand device is a ;'dead-line" of bright red aluminium paint down the middle of a crooked speedway must used by motorists in Wade Park. The park engineers, recognising that motorists, are as foolish as any one class of men can reasonably be expected m be, and realising, moreover, that some motorists will do fool things and _junk their care in resultant smash-ups, joined the "fool \sm out of danger" movement. The "deadline" is their invention.' The speedway ambles, crookedly, and the temptation that besets the motorists who use it, especially those who like a burst of speed, is to out diagonally aorose the road eyary time it "wiggles," and so save t'me and petrol. The "dead-line" works Jike a cNarm. It runs the length of the speedway, and is so brilliantly red that it hite the eye. It is in the exact middle of the road. When ( tlic motorist enters the speedway he iswerves unconsciously to the correct side of the "dead-line." Othor care, going in the opposite direction likewise keep to their,side of the •dead-line,'' and there are no collisions.

t It is a moral, not a physical, barner. And it is a, psychological truth that, if an iron fence—hotse-