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My local newspaper's website has the front pages of various old editions of the paper, and among them was one with this image:

enter image description here

It shows a newly-installed traffic safety sign in Brooklyn, with counters for "Killed on streets yesterday", "Fatal accidents this year", and "Fatal accidents this [obscured]". However, unlike modern counters that typically have two digits for the year at most, this one has three digits for "yesterday", four for "this year", and two for the unknown one.

Were the streets of Brooklyn really dangerous enough in 1924 that you could reasonably expect upwards of a hundred people to die from collisions in a single day?

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    In 1924 there were 19.4k automotive deaths across the nation, avg ~53 per day. Even if every single person killed happened to be in Brooklyn, the third digit would go untouched. Notably this rate is not that much higher than today - 17.1 per 100k people compared to 14.3 today.
    – SPavel ♦
    Commented Jan 20 at 21:37
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    According to an article here the obscured entry was fatal accidents per week.
    – justCal
    Commented Jan 20 at 22:16
  • That article even includes the data: "In 1926, there were 174 street fatalities in Brooklyn — a dramatic reduction from the 308 street deaths reported in 1923, the Eagle reported."
    – Brian Z
    Commented Jan 20 at 23:05
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    Brooklyn residents must have thought so - they had such high estimation of their skill in dodging trolleys that they named their baseball team after it: The Brooklyn (Trolley) Dodgers: "The team's name derived from the reputed skill of Brooklyn residents at evading the city's trolley streetcars. The name is a shortened form of their old name, the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers."
    – Pieter Geerkens
    Commented Jan 20 at 23:23
  • @PieterGeerkens Streetcar accidents were not a relevant part of the overall picture.
    – ccprog
    Commented Jan 21 at 3:32

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An article on another web site provides some more information concerning this sign. The article on Brownstoner.com "How the Death-O-Meter Helped Brooklynites Promote Street Safety in the 1920s" mentions some numbers concerning the accident rate, citing the original news article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

In 1926, there were 174 street fatalities in Brooklyn — a dramatic reduction from the 308 street deaths reported in 1923, the Eagle reported.

As pointed out by @kimchi-lover in comments the sign was humorously labeled the "Death-O-Meter" by the original news article. The drop in fatalities over the 3 year span might indicate that public awareness might have had a significant effect here.

Note that a second image on the web site with the sign in use, shows that it appears that the fourth digit on the 'Fatal Accidents This Year' counter has been blocked out. Some reconsideration on the need for 4 digits here apparently took place.

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