HIGHWAY NEEDS OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE
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they carried less than 300 vehicles an hour, are nevertheless improved as divided, multiple-lane highway; and besides these wide divided highways, there are 18 miles of undivided four-lane highway, 152 miles of three-lane, and 3,130 miles of two-lane highway 24 or more feet wide that also carried an hourly traffic of less than 300 vehicles.
The extreme of inadequate width on urban sections of the system is represented by 372 miles of streets less than 22 feet wide, in cities of 5,000 population or more, of which 252 miles are known to have carried more than 300 vehicles an hour.
Photo by Mississippi Highway Department
This is not a one-way road. Because the pavement on this causeway on U S Route 90 in Mississippi was inadequate in width and the shoulders too soft and narrow, the truck at the left sank deep into the ground when its wheels went off the pavement. Following traffic had to use the wrong lane to pass. Only 17 percent of the rural mileage of the interstate system is adequate in both surface and shoulder width.
Fatal Accidents and Deaths
The State highway departments reported 3,603 fatal accidents known to have occurred on roads and streets constituting the desig-
