STEERING FAILED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 3

STEERING FAILED

Bus-Driver’s Evidence (N.Z. Press Association) NELSON, July 23. The driver of a bus which left the road near Ward on May 7 killing two of the passengers told the Coroner (Mr G. P. Stewart) yesterday that the bus’s steering had failed. The two killed were Carol Ann Fraser, of Riwaka, and Trixie Ella McDowell, of Murchison. Lindsay Gordon Keeper said he was driving a Newman Brothers’ bus from Christchurch to Blenheim about midnight and had turned on to the Waimea overbridge, about five miles south of Ward. “I made a right-hand turn on to the bridge, crossed it, started to turn off the bridge and had gone about half way round the left-hand bend, a very sharp one, when the front right-hand side of the bus dropped down suddenly,” he said. “The bus turned right and went straight across the roadway. I tried to steer it back to the left, but the wheels would not answer.” The bus went through a fence, rolled down a bank sideways and came to rest in a gully on its right side. Keeper said he had noticed nothing wrong with the steering when approaching the bridge. The remaining witnesses in the inquest will be heard before the Coroner at Blenheim.