Minnesota Highways, November 1954

              MOM
warn
VOL.  4,  NO.   1
1246 University Ave., St. Paul 4, Minn.
NOVEMBER,  1954
State Joins S-D Day Campaign
3rd Test Strip is Installed
The third experimental installation in Minnesota of
?lded wire fabric to reinforce asphalt pavement was made
\y last month on the Minneapolis end of the Lake street-
Marshall avenue bridge over the Mississippi. Last year two
test strips were laid—one on T.H. 61 south of Moose Lake
and the other on T.H. 56 in South St. Paul.
Although there have been insufficient time and road use to fully
ascertain benefits which may result through the use of this reinforcing
Minnesota has joined with the other 47 states of the nation
in the greatest concerted effort to dramatize traffic safety
which has ever been attempted on a nation-wide basis.
Governor C. Elmer Anderson, along with President Eisenhower and the governors of all the states, has set December 15
as S-D Day—"Safe Driving Day". And what's supposed to
happen on S-D Day? Literally, nothing—nothing, if you want
to call a completely accident-free day as being nothing. That
is the aim of the present intensive public education  and
promotion which will precede S-D
Observing the installation of the welded wire fabric in the asphalt pavement
on the Minneapolis end of the Lake street-Marshall avenue bridge by Minneapolis
city workers are, left to right: John Dillery, sales representative of the American
Wire & Steel division of U. S. Steel, manufacturers of the reinforcing material;
John Swanberg, MHD materials and research engineer; Gordon E. Bodien, Minneapolis paving engineer; H. W. "Bob" Clark, administrative assistant to MHD
Maintenance Engineer C. L. Motl; and A. M. Marsh, district sales manager for
American Steel & Wire. Because this was a comparatively small job, the work of
applying the hot bitumen is being done manually; on bigger jobs a Barber-Greene
machine   is   used.
material in the tests conducted last year, the Department and the City
of Minneapolis felt that the resurfacing of the bridge carrying T.H. 212
traffic would afford another excellent test.
This fairly-new development in asphalt road construction uses
sheets of welded wire fabric eight feet square which are imbedded
in the wearing surface. In the first experiments with the fabric, some
difficulty was encountered in keeping it below the surface of the wearing course, but later improvisations on the Barber-Greene machines
have overcome this obstacle.
Welded wire reinforcement in asphaltic concrete resurfacing was
first used on a strip of roadway in Texas in 1946. Since that time, a number of communities and several state highway departments in addition
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Nelson Appointed
Personnel Officer
Lee J. Nelson, a veteran of
WW II, has been appointed
Personnel Officer to fill the
vacancy which has existed
since Kermit Bergstralh was
named administrative assistant to Commissioner Hoffmann.
A graduate from the University
of Minnesota in 1950, Lee has
spent three years in the State Civil
Service department working in the
classification and pay division. He
comes to the Department with
some knowledge of some of its
many personnel problems, inasmuch as he worked on examina-
(Continued   on   Page   8)
Day. In other words, every effort
will be made between now and
December 15 to instill safe driving
habits into every Minnesota motorist so that when the big day does
arrive safe driving will be almost
instictive on the part of every-
Minnesota motorist and S-D Day
can be completed without a single
traffic accident, anywhere in the
state.
Can such a thing be done? Let's
see what Earl M. Larimer, state
highway safety director and state
S-D director has to say.
"Yes, it very definitely CAN be
done! How? By each and every
motorist—and pedestrian—accepting
his personal responsibility for
driving and walking safely. Everyone—no matter who he or she is—
knows the difference between driving safely and driving in an unsafe
manner. Likewise, every pedestrian
knows the difference between safe
and unsafe walking on rural roads
or across city streets. Why, then,
do we have traffic accidents?
Simply because we don't put our
knowledge into practice—we expect
'the other fellow' to look out for us
when we violate sensible driving
or walking rules. In too many cases
'the other fellow' expects you to
look out for him and the result is
an. accident."
It might be well to point out
here that Minnesota has already
made a start towards reducing the
total number of traffic accidents.
In 1953, for instance, 53,055 accidents were reported to the Accident   Becords  section  of  the   De-
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