Labourer’s wife Bridget Driscoll took a trip to Crystal Palace (South East London) on 17 August 1896 and whilst there was run over by Arthur Edsall's imported Roger-Benz and so became the first road accident fatality in the United Kingdom.
So what was the risk involved, the car was reportedly doing the incredibly fast speed of 4 miles per hour, the driver said that he shouted a warning when he saw the woman in his path, he also said that he rang the warning bell – not much risk you may think!
Jerry Savage a local historian at the Upper Norwood Library remarks that the Victorians had no real sense of Health and Safety and so would probably have accepted the death as some sort of tragedy, but a few risk mitigations were put in place – it was soon required that three people were to take charge of a vehicle, a driver, a fireman to keep the car fuelled and a flag man to walk 60 yards in front of the car. Speed limits were reduced to 2 miles per hour in a town and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.
The coroner at Mrs Driscoll’s inquest said that he hoped hers would be the last such fatality – it is thought that since then more than 550,000 people have died on our roads.
No comments:
Post a Comment