Going back sixty years, there wasn't the usual jolly Grim Reaper safety ad in the pages of the Journal at this time in 1963. But there was this nearly full-page ad showing an impressive pile up of wrecked cars. It appeared in the Journal on July 3, 1963.
As the ad copy notes, "Bad enough, to see your accident-smashed car wind up on a junk heap. But the grimmest part of the picture doesn't show here. Behind these wrecks likes a tragic toll in precious lives lost, years of suffering and handicap to be endured. This, indeed, is your BEST reason to drive carefully."
But sixty years later, we never seem to learn.
After years of commuting to Cleveland on I-90 and witnessing reckless, high-speed drivers endangering others on a daily basis, I thought that my leisurely commute to Oberlin would be different. However, even though most of my trip is on two-lane Baumhart Road, I still see crazy drivers, driving much faster than the speed limit, passing illegally and narrowly avoiding head-on collisions at the last moment.
And not unlike the illustration in the 1963 ad, I see a flat bed truck carrying mangled cars to a fenced-in lot on the north side of U. S. Route 6, just west of Baumhart, on a daily basis. Those cars have to come from somewhere – and I think there's a steady supply in Lorain County.