KILLED BY CABS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 482, 21 June 1890, Page 6

KILLED BY CABS.

An Astonishing List of Street Accidents in London. If the honesty of cabmen is exhibited in the records kept by the Lost Property office, their recklessness is by no means blinked in the list of street accidents. It is a popular superstition with newspaper men that the van is so far ahead of all competitors in destroying life and limb in London, that it deserves the distinguishing title of * Demon.’ A reference to the authorities certainly shows that the vans killed nearly three times the. number of people that cabs did, bnb their list of injured is by no means so striking to the imaginative mind. The vans in 1888 slew forty-one, the cabs only fourteen, but the lighter vehicles surpassed the heavier in ‘ injured ’ by 1,441 to 1,104. These figures testify to a long list of brilliant and successful attempts to hurt daring or unwary passengers and afford very reasonable grounds for the terror with which elderly ladies and gentlemen long past their days of sprint racing or football regard the wild hansom as it sweeps suddenly round a curve. . As a matter of mere justice to all it should be stated that the ‘light par’ surpasses even the cab in its total of injured. Alto gether in London during 1888, 124 were killed and 5,555 were injured, a grand total which in any modern British battle would justify many musical lyrics, a shower of orders, and the striking of many service medals. As Pepys might have remarked, it is very pretty to observe that, in the honourable list of the hansoms, the killed amount to exactly one per cent, of the wounded.