Car Trouble On SR 163, 1958

It only looked like car trouble on SR 163, near the Laurel Street bridge, in July of 1958. A newspaper reporter was dispatched to the site to pretend her car conked out.

"Sixty cars passed in five minutes and all the reporter got was a case of sunburn.... Then a male member of the newspaper staff stood by the car. His motorist-quotient appeal was even less: 70 cars went past him without stopping."

Two drivers did eventually stop -- a foreign-car mechanic and a tow-truck driver. The experiment made the front page.

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