Highway: Help!

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Tooling along the freeway at rush hour, with cars whooshing around him like jet-propelled lemmings, the home-bound commuter is 20.34 minutes from the carport when glunk!—his engine expires. Or else sudden snow turns a mountain road to meringue, or the fuel gauge comes up E in the midst of the desert, 25 miles after that road sign,

NEXT SERVICE STATION 50 MILES.

Compared to the driver's plight in such situations, Ulysses' voyage home was a pleasure cruise. "The life expectancy of a stranded driver walking on an expressway," said an official of Detroit's Automobile Manufacturers' Association last week, "is perhaps 30 seconds." His expectancy is diminishing constantly as superhighways lace the land, bypassing towns, eliminating crossroad garages.

To cope with the problem, the A.M.A. has urged the Federal Communications Commission to allot two citizens' band radio channels for the sole use of drivers in distress, whose calls for assistance would be monitored by highway patrol or sheriff's offices.

Two-way transceiver radios, similar to those used by radio-dispatched taxis, have a range of about 20 miles in the country, cost about $75. Thus equipped, the motor association pointed out, the beleaguered motorist would have only to "pull over, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and start talking." He would not even have to cry HELP! for that is what the program would be called. Short, of course, for Highway Emergency Locating Plan.