The 1930s were not only a period of the Great Depression but also of a nationwide panic regarding traffic safety. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote to state governors in 1935, imploring them to curtail “the increasing number of deaths and injuries” due to automobile accidents.
Leslie Jones of the Boston Herald-Traveler took hundreds upon hundreds of photographs at the scenes of fender-benders and fatal collisions during the precarious decade. Often, Jones was the first to respond to the scenes of accidents where people had suffered severe property damage or perhaps even lost their lives. In the late 1930s, auto manufacturers began introducing safety features like hydraulic brakes.
