Transport: Rogers' Reaper

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U. S. Highway 71 begins in Kansas City, ends at Baton Rouge, La. It passes through northwest Arkansas en route and serves the town of Rogers (pop. 3,500). From a drugstore window there, 35-year-old Clerk Cloe Mitchell often ruminated on the volume, speed and danger of passing traffic. Not long ago Cloe Mitchell decided to do something about it.

Startled last week were Arkansans and their visitors rolling over Route 71 near Rogers as they rounded curves or topped hills to come upon the horrifying sight of Death itself. A supernaturally tall, black garbed figure, scythe draped mournfully over its left arm stood at the edge of the pavement, beckoning.

Inside the black shroud was Clerk Cloe Mitchell. From a Rogers doctor he had borrowed skull and arm bones and at least for a time after passing Spectre Mitchell, motorists, particularly colored ones, slowed down. Declared State Police Superintendent Albright: "Statues of the Grim Reaper on highways would cause motorists to drive with caution."

Most of the 1,000,000 yearly U. S. automobile accidents occur to experienced male adult drivers (over 25 ) going straight in passenger cars in good condition on dry roads in clear daylight, and many are the variations of Arkansas's prophetic Grim Reaper that other States have concocted. They range from Oklahoma City's American Legion campaign this spring (ghosts of 85 dead paraded through the streets), to Ohio's now abandoned white graveyard crosses that marked the scenes of highway fatalities. But accidents increase and States, insurance and tire companies have about given up trying to think up gruesome warnings. The American Automobile Association says that towns where they appear find that they are bad for business.