WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
ON OUR TOWS
Profile America — Tuesday, December 6th. This year marks the centennial of the cloverleaf road intersection, patented by Maryland civil engineer Arthur Dale. The automobile was barely 25 years from first appearing on American roads, and there were only some 3.6 million sputtering cars and trucks rolling on the nation's 295,000 miles of paved roads. Traffic density and high speeds were not yet problems for the cloverleaf to address, but automotive accidents and frequent breakdowns were. So this year is also the centennial of the invention of the tow truck. Ernest W. Holmes of Chattanooga, Tennessee fitted a Cadillac chassis with booms, cables and hooks to collect stricken vehicles. His patent came in 1917. Today, around 8,600 towing services attend to breakdowns among America's 260-million motor vehicles. Profile America is in its 20th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sources:
Cloverleaf patent/accessed 10/25/2016: http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/07/local/me-cloverleaf7
Motor Vehicle registrations in 1916: Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2/page 716
Surfaced roads in 1916: Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2/page 710
Tow truck invention/accessed 10/25/2016: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/edge/story/2016/oct/01/chattanoogas-holmes-family-invented-tow-truck/388255/
Towing services and employment: http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/BP/2014/00A1//naics~48841
Motor vehicle registrations in 2014/accessed 10/25/2016: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics and accounts drawn from cited non-Census sources are employed for illustrative or narrative purposes, and are not attested to by the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Audio" in the "Library" pull-down menu).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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