Street Traffic Students Operate Driver Testing Machines at Automobile Show

Harvard will be well represented at the annual Automobile show which opened yesterday in New York City's Grand Central Palace, by students in the Bureau for Street Traffic Research. Nineteen men now studying traffic problems and their solution will operate the devices for driver-testing in a "driver's clinic" developed by Harry R. DeSilva, lecturer on Motor Vehicle Administration and Driver Control.

A complete set of the DeSilva equipment, formerly located in Hemenway gymnasium, will be placed on the fourth floor of the show, where it will be explained and operated by the students. The machinery, which cost $50,000 and took four years to develop, will be in continuous operation for the duration of the show.

No Joy Ride

The task of holding down a booth at the Automobile Show will be but a part of the work being undertaken during a field trip for students in the bureau, which began Sunday and will continue until Friday, November 5. By no means a joy ride, according to Maxwell Halsey, assistant director of the Bureau, the trip wil mean 13-hour-a-day work for the students. "When they come back it'll take 'em two or three days to recover!" predicted Mr. Halsey grimly.

In order to gain valuable first-hand experience with highway problems, the men drove down in cars over some of the more important eastern routes. Once established at Hotel George Washington in New York, they will make short trips of inspection to parkway developments in Westchester, Long Island, and New Jersey

Visit Traffic Offices

Among the places they will visit will be: the Port of New York Authority; the Long Island Park Commission; the Westchester County Park Commission; the Essex County (New Jersey) engineering offices, and some of the traffic offices in the metropolitan district.

On Friday, the group will attend a luncheon being given by the Automotive Safety Foundation, the organization that yearly spends over a half million dollars for safety on the highways.

Students in the bureau will go on another trip to New York in the spring when the Greater New York Safety Conference takes place. At that time, they will do some studying in New Jersey, and will also take some individual trips in the vicinity.