BALTIMORE
May 8, 1963

Major Puncke, Colonel J. Arman, Commissioner Schmidt, distin-
guished delegates attending this Conference, ladies and gentlemen:

The State of Maryland is pleased and honored to have as its guests
you who have come here to take part in this Northeastern Regional
Graduate Retraining Conference which is being conducted by the
Traffic Institute of Northwestern University and the graduates of that
Institute who are now connected with police departments in Maryland.
It is gratifying to us in Maryland to know that we have among us here
during these three days men with the experience, the knowledge and the
zeal to help find a solution to the nationwide problem of traffic accidents.
May I, as Governor and on behalf of all Marylanders, extend a warm
welcome to those of you who have come here from other states to attend
this Conference. We hope your visit with us will be both pleasurable
and beneficial. I should like to welcome, too, the distinguished repre-
sentatives of the Northwestern University Traffic Institute who are with
us, Mr. Hudson Hamm, of the Institute's Division of Field Service,
and Mr. Paul Dixon, who maintains contact with the Institute's gradu-
ates who are serving as law enforcement officers in most of the com-
munities of this country.

We here in Maryland are very sharply conscious of our indebtedness
to Northwestern's Traffic Institute. Our State Police, the police of Balti-
more City and many other local police departments of our State number
among their forces men who have undergone the training in this
renowned institution and are now back here putting into practice the
valuable lessons they have learned about traffic and traffic control. We
have borrowed from your brains, your experience, your research, and
we want the Institute to know that we feel a deep sense of obligation to
it for its assistance in our efforts to reduce traffic accidents and their
costly toll in lives, injuries and the destruction of property.

As the Governor of this State, I am distressed by the knowledge that
we have been able to do so little to correct this condition and provide a
greater measure of safety to those who travel on our highways. It is
most disturbing to me to observe a mounting toll in accident fatalities
even as we go about adopting approved and carefully-studied measures
to reduce the rate of traffic accidents. The knowledge that others about

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