SUMMIT ROAD ACCIDENT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22345, 8 March 1938, Page 3

SUMMIT ROAD ACCIDENT

CAR SOMERSAULTS DOWN GULLY BUS-DRIVER COMPLAINS ABOUT PARKING The first accident on the new Summit road from Evans pass to the Sign of the Takahe, opened 10 days ago, was reported yesterday, when a small car, which had plunged through a fence and somersaulted, was found, unoccupied, 100 feet below the highway near Castle Point. Apparently no person was injured, as reports of the accident were not made to the Christchurch, Lyttelton, or Sumner police, and no injured person was admitted to the Christchurch Public Hospital.

The car went off the paved surface at a bend, dived through a rabbitproof fence, and ended upside down 100 feet below the road on a very steep hillside. Motorists who inspected the wrack were amazed that the car had come to rest there, as the gully is very deep. A man who noticed the capsized car yesterday morning made an inspection, but he found nothing to suggest that any person had been injured. Castle Rock, where the mishap occurred, protrudes from the hillside west of the Bridle Path, immediately above Heathcote. On the lower part of the spur below the rock is situated the reservoir for the Lyttelton water supply. A complaint against the indiscriminate "parking by motorists on the Summit road was made by a bus driver, who said that on Sunday cars were parked, at places two abreast, on both sides of the road. Traffic was held up for a considerable time because of cars being parked in the most ridiculous places. The introduction of a regulation compelling all motorists to keep moving on the road would be necessary, he considered, if congestion and accidents were to be avoided.

The road was perfectly safe, said the driver, but some motorists pulled up and delayed all other traffic as soon as they saw a bus coming in their direction. There was not one part on the road where a bus could not safely pass oncoming traffic, and motorists had no cause to be hesitant in driving.