Traffic Supervision and Road Safety

Traffic supervision usually means the traffic work of police. Most people agree that traffic supervision is very important in preventing traffic accidents. Police activity, as it relates to highway safety, is a primary consideration in this paper. Perhaps traffic supervision may best be described as the elastic or flexible element in traffic safety programs— the work that fills in the gaps and plugs the holes left by the safety efforts of other agencies. Sometimes traffic supervision is what holds the traffic safety program together. Perhaps this idea can be expressed better in another way: if road builders provided the best possible streets and highways for safety, if car manufacturers and owners did the same for vehicles, and if driver educators and license authorities arranged to have all drivers fully qualified at all times, there would surely be little need for traffic supervision. Two contrasting examples in connection with roads and streets will illustrate how traffic supervision adjusts to needs. Forty years ago, recognizing the need for traffic control devices, Detroit police estab­ lished a traffic engineering department to install traffic signals and signs, mark parkings, establish speed limits, and indicate parking re­ strictions. Nobody else in the city was doing this. Today these func­ tions are performed by traffic engineers in Detroit and elsewhere. On the other hand, newly built limited-access roads have been so completely engineered that traffic supervision on them is largely assistance to motorists with relatively little need for police activity of essentially accident-prevention nature. Traffic supervision has three main functions: (1) traffic law enforce­ ment (2) traffic direction (3) traffic accident reporting and investiga­ tion. Each of these functions contributes to highway safety directly and also by enhancing the safety efforts of other agencies. In discussing such activities, it is not necessary to make a fine dis­ tinction between work which prevents accidents and that which keeps