MAKE WAY!!!!
Posted on 08/17/2010 9:19:00 AM PDT by Cardhu
Almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day, according to the campaigning charity RoadPeace which is marking National Road Victim Month. So who was the UK's first fatal car accident victim - exactly 114 years ago - and what happened?
There was little more than a handful of petrol cars in Britain when labourer's wife Bridget Driscoll, 44, took a trip to the Crystal Palace, south-east London, on 17 August 1896.
So she could be forgiven for being bewildered by Arthur Edsall's imported Roger-Benz which was part of a motoring exhibition taking place as she attended a Catholic League of the Cross fete with her 16-year-old daughter, May, and a friend.
But as the Times recalled 70 years later, when giving mention to a memorial service for Mrs Driscoll at her local church, hers was the misfortune of becoming the UK's first traffic fatality.
"At the inquest, Florence Ashmore, a domestic servant, gave evidence that the car went at a 'tremendous pace', like a fire engine - 'as fast as a good horse could gallop'," it read.
"The driver, working for the Anglo-French Motor Co, said that he was doing 4mph when he killed Mrs Driscoll and that he had rung his bell and shouted."
Continue reading the main story In today's MagazineFlour + sugar + children = mess The first fatal car accident Is clearing scrub punishment? How to count rough sleepers? The car's maximum speed, the inquest heard, was 8mph but its speed had been deliberately limited.
One of Mr Edsell's two passengers during the exhibition ride, Ellen Standing, told the inquest she heard the driver shout "stand back" and then the car swerved - giving her a "peculiar sensation", according to a contemporary edition of Autocar.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
..."A lot of people didn't want drivers running around the country scaring horses," he explains, adding that there were fewer than 20 petrol cars in Britain at the time.
MAKE WAY!!!!
He was doing 4mph (about the speed of a brisk walk), had time to ring his bell and shout, but no time to brake?
It was a German-engineered car. I'm sure it had brakes, didn't it?
I found this line interesting:
‘And as Jerry Savage, local history librarian at Upper Norwood Library, notes: “The Victorians had no real sense of health and safety. They would just sort of accept the death as what they would call a horrible tragedy.”’
I guess this means because people weren’t controlled, accidents happened? I keep thinking of the story a few days about about a light bulb change costing 8000 pounds because it violated safety ordinances to climb up and fix it.
The problem was, that he did not know how to drive and pulling back on the steering wheel had no effect.
As for believing the driver was going 4mph I bet it was 8mph, but he never looked at the speedometer until he stopped so what did he know.
No way did you hit the brakes.
You did one of three things -
1. Throw an anchor over the side and come to a screeching stop (if one could call that screeching).
2. disengage the gears and roll to stop (would probably take a couple of seconds), or -
3. Hit the pedestrian, horse or other object upon which one would apologize for any inconvenience.
bttt
You are right I saw something on YouTube a while ago and it was just a video taken from a tram runnig along a wide street in a city. People crossed the street anywhere they wanted - no traffic lights - the middle of the road was the normal place to be and go left or right to avoid people or traffic.
And of course, it was Bush’s Fault
I was guessing it was a teenaged girl name “Mayhem” texting.
It was an SUV!!
*snicker*
Nowadays, with tort lawyers, horrible tragedies are viewed as money-making events.
The first vehicle registration plates were introduced in France by the Department of the Seine under the Paris Police Ordinance of 14 August 1893, which stated: “Each motor vehicle shall bear on a metal plate and in legible writing the name and address of its owner, also the distinctive number used in the application for authorization. This plate shall be placed at the left-hand side of the vehicle – it shall never be hidden.”
In a general decree of 30 September, 1901, this rule was extended to include the rest of France.
Weighed enough to be used as a weapon?
114 years ago and drivers were already lying about how fast they were driving when the got int the wreck.
Ambulance chasing lawyers can’t have been too far behind.
A trip down Market Street, San Francisco, 1905:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2MMskdPho&feature=related
Drats, no pinball sounds.
Just goes to show you we can’t trust people to be “racing around” at 4mph with a deadly weapon! ;-)
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