this 1964 meeting of your organization. We hope you have enjoyed
your visit with us as much as we have enjoyed having you as our
guests. We hope that your conference in Maryland has been an interest-
ing and successful one as well as a very pleasant one. I know that
our guests here from the other states will forgive me when I offer
a special greeting and a special salutation to our friends and neighbors
of the Canadian provinces who are with us here this evening. We hope
that your visit with us has been enjoyable enough to persuade you to
return, as soon as possible and as often as possible in the future.
As the chief executive of one of the jurisdictions represented in this
Conference, I am keenly aware of the growing importance of the
public function you perform as administrators of motor vehicle laws.
The invention of the internal combustion engine, and its application
to a mode of travel and transportation, reshaped the manners, the
habits and the thinking of our society. While there are those among
us who can still remember when the automobile and the motor truck
were objects of some rarity, we know that in our daily life, such as we
understand it, would be unthinkable without them. And it takes no
breadth of imagination to understand that they will increase in number
and importance as we continue to grow on this continent. We have
been described aptly as "a nation on wheels, " and of course this
applies to Canada the same as it does to our union of states.
Few people—if, indeed, any—would dispute the values that have
been added to our civilization by the advent of the motor vehicle.
It perhaps has contributed more to the high standard of living we now
enjoy than any other single invention of our industrial age. But like
so many other of man's devices, created for his improvement and
enjoyment, the motor vehicle has produced problems and headaches.
And without proper regulation and control, they become a machine
of his destruction rather than an instrument of his happiness and his
well-being. That is why the public function you perform is of para-
mount importance. That is why it will grow with importance with every
passing year.
In every statistic in your files, in every highway traffic count, in
every accident report, the need for stronger regulation and more rigid
control of motor vehicles becomes more apparent. Since World War II,
the increase in the number of motor vehicles registered, and the number
of miles they travel, has been nothing short of phenomenal. For example,
in 1946 our Department of Motor Vehicles registered 492, 487 vehicles.
The registration for last year was 1, 369, 425. The same pattern of
growth I am certain will be found in all the states and all the provinces
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