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On This Day in Automotive History: September 23

On This Day in Automotive History
September 23

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Birthdays: Louis Disbrow (1876), Jacques Rey (1908), Francis Radaker (1925), Oda Greene (1928), Don Edmunds (1930), Bill Isgrig (1930), Tom Colella (1934), Crockey Peterson (1939), Hartmut Von Seelen (1941), Gene Black (1943), Don Adams (1945), Gary Weinbroer (1948), Craig Carter (1949), Rick Suran (1954), Colin White (1956), Randy Ogden (1958), Dale Whittington (1959), Don Young (1960), Tommy Sigmon (1962), Michael Auriemma (1964), Bill Rollwitz (1964), Jeff Buice (1965), Kenny Gaddis (1965), Dan Garber (1966), Oscar Peralta (1967), Will Turner (1968), Charles Hudson (1971), Richard Staskowski (1973), Rick Thoennes (1973), Christopher Wiehle (1973), Billy Smeal (1974), Todd Hirschfeld (1979), Robert Doornbos (1981), Davide Di Benedetto (1983), Regan Smith (1983), Erik Janis (1987), Max Dumarey (1988), Carl Skerlong (1988), Garth Rickards (1992), Luc Haukaas (1993), Jack Aitken (1995), Ryan Vargas (2000)

1920: Bureau of Public Roads, Forest Service, and Colorado State Highway Department officials sign a co-operative agreement providing for construction of an automobile road across Cumbres Pass near New Mexico. Initial survey work is done in 1920, and the road across the pass opens in the fall of 1924. C. F. Capes of Bureau of Public Roads' Denver office is resident engineer in charge of the project. Marshall Sprague's 1964 book The Great Gates (Little, Brown, and Company) describes the road as "a splendid, thrilling, twisty gravel road, ignored by average tourist . . . ."

1933: American Trucking Associations was founded.

1967: The first episode of Speed Racer aired.

1975: In Paris, France, at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, Administrator Norbert Tiemann suggests automobiles may soon have to be restricted from the central business districts of large cities. A federally funded demonstration program to test this technique will be launched in 1976. "I do not make this suggestion naively; I am well aware of the opposition such action would generate. Certainly it would be unpopular politically. But I think it is an idea whose time must soon come."

1977: At the International Club in Washington, DC, to address Citizens for Highway Safety, Administrator William Cox quotes from FHWA's 1976 Statement of National Highway Transportation Policy: "No value is greater than that of the human life and no transportation responsibility more important than the safety of people."

1997: The film Steel Chariots was released.

2008: The film Death Racers was released.