![]() In the 1930s it published Sportsmanlike Driving, a forerunner of modern driver-safety textbooks, and helped pioneer traffic safety education classes in elementary and junior high schools. Over the years, AAA has been one of the nation's leading advocates of highway safety. It has also been a vocal critic of national highway policy at times, arguing against the diversion of motor-vehicle-use taxes into nonhighway expenditures. From the 1916 Federal Aid Highway Act through the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, to the present, AAA has pushed hard for toll-free improved highways and for highway beautification programs. The club has been active in lobbying for motorist-friendly road facilities from its inception. Reflecting the increasing popularity of "motor touring" of the time, AAA issued its first domestic tour book in 1917 and in 1926 published its first series of tour books, issued the first modern-style AAA road maps, and began rating tourist accommodations. The Automobile Club of Missouri inaugurated emergency road service for its members in 1915, a service soon offered by all AAA clubs. ![]() With the burgeoning use of the automobile after 1910, the clubs constituting AAA increasingly became mass membership organizations, offering special services to members in addition to concerning themselves with the wide range of matters affecting all motorists. (Many states, for example, refused to recognize the licenses and registrations of out-of-state motorists, making interstate travel by automobile difficult.) By its 1909 annual meeting, AAA represented thirty state associations with 225 affiliated clubs and claimed 25,759 members. ![]() AAA, popularly known as Triple A, formed when nine local clubs recognized the need for a national federation to coordinate their efforts on the many matters of concern to motorists that transcended municipal and state boundaries. ![]() Early clubs in other cities also followed the ACA pattern of restricted memberships, elaborate clubhouse and garage facilities, and an emphasis on social functions-along with making significant efforts to secure improved roads and national regulation of the motor vehicle. Until that time, the automobile club movement in the United States was dominated by the Automobile Club of America (ACA), an elite group of New York City automobilists who organized in 1899 with the intention of exerting national influence. AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION (AAA), a federation of state and local automobile clubs, has been the principal advocate for American motorists since its formation in 1902. ![]()
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