Throughout the 1930s, the United States contended not only with the Great Depression but also with a nationwide panic surrounding traffic safety. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt penned a letter to state governors, imploring them to curtail “the increasing number of deaths and injuries” related to car crashes.
During the precarious decade, Leslie Jones of the Boston Herald-Traveler took hundreds upon hundreds of photographs at the scenes of fender-benders and fatal collisions. As car companies gradually introduced much-needed safety features like hydraulic brakes, it was Jones who scrambled to the sites where people had badly damaged property or in the worst cases, lost their lives.
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Ambulance tips over on Stuart Street |
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Auto accident, 1935 |
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Auto accident, corner of Warren Ave. and W. Canton St., South End |
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Auto accident in front of Hotel Vendome |
Auto accident in South End, 1931 |
Auto goes into pond, 1938 |
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Auto goes into trench in Peabody Square, 1931 |
Auto overturned at corner of Radcliffe Street, 1938 |
Auto wreck, Burlington, Massachusetts, 1931 |
Auto wreck, Roxbury crossing Columbus Avenue, 1931 |
Car crushed by trolley - North Hampton and Washington Sts, 1932 |
Auto hit by train kills two. Belmont, 1933 |
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Car wreck at Charles River, Cambridge, 1933 |
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Fence keeps car from falling, Brookline, 1931 |
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Auto plunges into Fore River drowning 3. Fireboat pulls auto out, 1933 |
Truck and El Bus collide in South Boston, 1934 |
Truck hangs by wheel off bridge, 1934 |
Car and truck collide, Back Bay, 1932 |
Car goes into trench, 1935 |
Auto goes out of control and crashes through fence onto B&A Tracks near Greenwich Park, South End, 1934 |
Mystic River, 1930 |
Auto hits lamp post at intersection, 1930 |
Car in stairwell |
Car stolen by kids crashes into lawyer's car, killing him, 1935 |
Auto wreck, South End, 1931 |
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Truck crashes through garage several stories up East Cambridge, 1938 |
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Wreck draws crowd, 1935 |