CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 107 



SUGGESTIONS AND DISCUSSION BY THE DELEGATES. 



Me. Charles G. Alleeton of Middlebuet, Conn. 



I thought perhaps I could tell my brother farmers something 

 about how to raise money, but as I have been asked to speak of 

 the automobile law, I want to say in regard to the speed limit 

 that it is absolutely impossible to enforce any speed limit that is 

 measured by a stop watch in the hands of some officer trying to 

 ride a bicycle or drive a motorcycle at the same time. I will read 

 a clipping from a newspaper on this matter: — 



Automobile speed traps have no terrors for Walter C. Kerr, a 

 member of the regatta committee of the New York Yacht Club. He 

 has timed so many races that he is skeptical of the accuracy of the 

 police eye. He succeeded yesterday in upsetting many pet theories 

 of Bingham's officers. Kerr was caught in a speed trap on Staten 

 Island some days ago, and arraigned before Magistrate Marsh yester- 

 day on the charge of breaking the speed law into small bits by driving 

 a 60-horsepower machine at the rate of 60 miles an hour. Kerr is 

 president of an engineering company, and between the time of his 

 arrest and arraignment he sent a force of men down to Staten Island. 

 He came to court with a plotted survey of the route where he was 

 chased by the police. When Policeman Silverbar finished his testimony 

 he was handed a roll of blue prints to identify various points and 

 courses taken by the machine. " Now, from where you stood, looking 

 at an angle of 14 degrees, 14 minutes from point A," began Kerr, 

 " what do you estimate to be the error of the visual angle, reckoned 

 from points B, C, and D?" "That will do, that will do," said the 

 magistrate. " I can see at a glance that the officer might be anjrwhere 

 from 100 to 500 feet wrong, and not know it. You are discharged." 



I have here clippings of similar decisions, and could read for a 

 week the same kind of things. Now in Connecticut we say a man 

 shall drive reasonably, at a reasonable speed, having regard to 

 the width of street and the traffic. Every arrest that has been 

 made has been a conviction. There is no possible way of getting 

 out of it. Under our old law, with our speed limit of 12 miles 

 an hour, a man could drive down through any street in our cities. 



