“The automobile is treacherous, just as a cat is. It is tragically difficult to realize that it can become the deadliest missile, and can instantly turn … into a mad bull elephant.” So J. C. Furnas warned his readers in an article for the August 1935 Reader's Digest entitled “… And Sudden Death.” Furnas's graphic description of the devastation on the highway in the wake of a crash was intended to terrify drivers into saner behavior behind the wheel. His words forced the reader to imagine the horror of accident scenes that “no artist working on a safety poster would dare depict … in full detail.” Reader's Digest prefaced the piece with a warning to the fainthearted.