Editors hung up on hazardous holiday highways

“The StarNews continued its odd fascination with traffic-fatality predictions with the main headline on Page 1: ‘Memorial Day Weekend Traffic Toll Promises to Reach Appalling Mark.’

” ‘Safety experts,’ the story said, ‘stuck to their grim prediction that the period threatened to be “one of the most deadly we have ever recorded.” ‘ The article noted that so far the holiday weekend traffic death toll was averaging four fatalities per hour nationwide.”

— From a  50-years-ago “Back Then” item in the Wilmington Star-News (or, as it now styles itself, the StarNews)

The National Safety Council, formed in 1953 at the behest of President Eisenhower, continues to predict holiday weekend death tolls — here’s how —  but they no longer command much newsprint, even in Wilmington.