A Moment in Time: Safe Driving Day 1954-1955

Weingroff, Richard F. · 2021 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration

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Summary

This historical article by the Federal Highway Administration examines the "Safe Driving Day" (S-D Day) initiatives of 1954 and 1955, contextualizing them within President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s broader efforts to address highway safety. During the 1950s, highway safety was conceptualized as a "three-legged stool" involving roads, vehicles, and drivers. Because the federal government lacked authority to mandate vehicle safety standards, initiatives focused heavily on driver behavior. Motivated by the high annual death toll—38,000 lives in 1953, which Eisenhower compared unfavorably to Korean War casualties—the President established the Action Committee for Traffic Safety in 1954 to coordinate national and local safety efforts. The primary intervention was Safe Driving Day, a campaign urging all Americans to avoid traffic accidents for a single day. The first S-D Day occurred on December 15, 1954, preceded by ten days of intensive public education and media outreach. President Eisenhower actively promoted the event, issuing statements and filmed messages urging citizens to obey traffic laws and exercise courtesy. The second S-D Day was held on December 1, 1955, expanded to include a 21-day campaign period. However, Eisenhower’s participation was limited due to a heart attack in September 1955, though he issued a statement supporting the initiative. The results of these campaigns were mixed and ultimately deemed unsuccessful. On the 1954 S-D Day, fatalities dropped slightly from 60 to 51 compared to the same day in 1953, but skeptics attributed this to random variation rather than the campaign. The 1955 S-D Day saw an increase in fatalities from 81 to 89 compared to the previous year. Overall, annual traffic deaths rose from 36,300 in 1954 to 38,300 in 1955, the highest total since 1941. Consequently, S-D Day was discontinued after 1955, with experts criticizing the "gimmick" approach as unsound and distracting from necessary year-round safety programs. The article concludes that while the S-D Day campaigns failed to significantly reduce accidents, Eisenhower’s most significant contribution to highway safety was signing the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. This legislation launched the Interstate Highway System, which addressed the "road" leg of the safety stool. The National Safety Council noted that limited-access highways could reduce traffic deaths by 65 to 75 percent. Although annual fatalities remained high through the late 1950s, the fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled declined from 6.65 in 1953 to 5.06 in 1960. The Interstate System is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives, proving more effective than the behavioral campaigns of the early 1950s.

Key finding

Safe Driving Day campaigns in 1954 and 1955 failed to produce significant reductions in traffic fatalities, with 1955 seeing an increase in deaths compared to the previous year, leading to the abandonment of the initiative in favor of infrastructure-focused safety measures.

Methodology

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Provenance

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• public messaging