PEDESTRIAN'S DEATH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 162, 27 July 1937, Page 8

PEDESTRIAN'S DEATH

Coroner Satisfied Car Was Not Speeding WAITANGI FATALITY An inquest into the death of Thomas WiUiam Humphreys, a teamster, of Waitangi, who was knocked down by a motor-car on the Napier-Hastings road last week, was held in the Hastings Courthouse this morning. The district coroner, Mr. G. Ebbett, presided. Sergeant Mclntosh conducted tho proceedings. Mr. Humphreys died 24 hours after "his admission to hospital. He was a bachelor residing at Bay View, but had been employed on the rivef-diversion work at Waitangi until his deatn, and had been camping dn that vicinity. A verdict was returned that Mr. Humphreys died at the Hastings Soldiers' Memorial Hospital as a result of injuries received when he was etruck on the Napier-Hastings road near Waitangi by a car driven by Mr. D. R. Petrowskie, of Hastings. "The whole of the evidence shows," said Mr. Ebbett, "that driving conditions on the night of the accident were indescribably bad. It is not my duty to say whether there was any negligence on anybody's part, but I feel that, coneidering the conditions and • also the evidence, the accident would seem to have been qudte inevitable. I am satisfied there was no excessivo speed and that the driver of the cat was sober at the time." Dudley Robert Petrowski'e, of Hastings, said that on July 17 he was driving his car towards Napier with three passengers. Driving conditions were bad and heavy rain was falling. His speed was not more than *20 miles an hour; He did not see Mr. Humphreys until he was about two feet away, and it was then too late to avoid him. He felt a bump as be struck the man, and he at once stopped and got out. Tho force of the impact caused the water to flow out of the radiatar and put the car out of order. Silvester Thomas Mahoney, of Napier, said he was driving & car to Hastings on the night of the accident. Vasibility was bad. At the foot of the oineline near the bridge he was teinporarily dazzled by the lighta of an oncoming car. This car was on its correct side, but seemede- suddenly to swerve further to the left and stopped. When he drew level, he said, he saw that there had been an accident and stopped his car. Mr. Humphreys was lying on the road unconscious with a wound in the back of the head. Witness diovp him to the Hastings Soldiers' Memorial Hospital. His attention had ce&n drawn to two bottles of beer lyin'g in a basket near the roadside at the time of the accident. Terence liobert Wilson, of Hastings a passenger in Petrowskie 's car, saul that Petrowskie was quite sober at the time. Oonstablef G. Murray, of Clive, said that Petrowskie informed him qf the accident half an hour after it had occurred. The night was wet and driving conditions were bad. Witness was shown the injured man in a car outside the polico sta.tion. The man was then unconscious. At the scene of the accident, northc of the Waitangi traffic bridge, the roadway was 19 feet wide and the spot where the man was lying was eight feet from the side of the tarred road surface. The radiator of Petrowskie 's car was knocked back and the left-hand lamp had been knocked upwards.