" Cow Catchers for Cars."

Progress, Volume II, Issue 10, 1 August 1907, Page 364

" Cow Catchers for Cars."

" Cow-catchers " on motor cars may be seen shortly. Mr. J. F. An sell, a London barrister, who was induced to consider the subject by seeing a man pinned under the wheels of a car in Trafalgar Sqaare, is patenting an invention which is now under official consideration. This life guard is V shaped, sloping from top to base, and projecting beyond the wheels and mud guards, so that a person struck would roll off away from the vehicle. The guard is made to strike below the knees, and the base has a pneumatic or resilient covering. It is said to be practical for all kinds of cars. One difficulty for inventors, however, is that many cars are already of regulation length — twenty-three feet — so that a protruuing cow-catcher would make the vehicle ilLgal. In the case of small fast cars another difficulty has been that at high speeds all the proposed life-saving apparatuses investigated have been more likely, than otherwise, to drop on the victim and crush him.