FATAL MOTOR ACCIDENT

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 153, 4 August 1914, Page 5

FATAL MOTOR ACCIDENT

! MR R. BLUNDEN'S DEATH. An inquest touching the death of the late Mr Beginald Blunden, of Bennetts, who was fatally injured in a motor car accident near Springbank on Saturday, was held before Mr T. A. B. Bailey at the Brockenhurst private hospital last evening. Mr van Ascli watched the •proceedings on behalf of the driver of the car, Mr L. W. Blunden, a son of the deceased. Leonard Walter Blunden said that he left Rangiora at 7.18 p.ni. with his father, in a two-seater 32 h.p. Hupmobile. There, were two acetylene headlights in good order. When he crossed the culvert over the waterrace beyond Spjringbank the car struck a telegraph post on the side of the road just beyond the culvert. The crossing: required two short turns, one going on and the other going off the culvert*. Some loose shingle on *the approach probably caused the car to swerve a little. With the impact the body of the car swung round. His father was apparently jerked forward and sideways, and his forehead struck the post. He saw that his father was unconscious, when he stopped the car immediately after the -impact. They were both perfectly sober. He.had heard of o.ther motorists who had narrowly missed colliding with the pole, even'on daylight. After hearing the medical evidence, which attributed the death to compression of the brain as the result of haemorrhage, the coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, no blame being attachable to Mr L. Blunden. Br Will stated in his evidence that he considered the crossing a dangerous one. In attempting to avoid a "pothole '' in the track he had himself had a narrow escape from running into -the post, in daylight. Anyone driving at night, watching the drop, and not knowing the position of the pole, might easily come into collision with it.