Driver Held Incapable Of Controlling Car

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31170, 21 September 1966, Page 7

Driver Held Incapable Of Controlling Car

(N.Z. Press Association) PALMERSTON NORTH, September 20. In the Coroner’s Court at Foxton yesterday Mr J. P. Bertram was told that the blood taken from the body of a taxi-driver killed in a headon collision on the Foxton Beach road on June 3 had an alcohol content “sufficient to make him completely incapable of having control of a motor vehicle.”

The inquest found that Edna May George and Thomas Henry Taylor died from injuries suffered when two cars collided on June 3.

Ernest Edward George said that he was returning to Foxton beach with his wife and two daughters in a car. His wife was beside him in the front seat. On the Foxton Beach road and approaching Foxton Beach township he saw a car coming towards him, “weaving,” and on the wrong side of the road. “1 slowed down and kept well on my side. He came straight at me and did not pull back. I had nearly stopped when the other car hit me,” George said. A witness riding in the other car, driven by Taylor, said that she was sitting in the back seat. Taylor seemed his normal self. Of the accident she remembered nothing but “a great glare of lights and then a blackout.”

A police constable described finding Taylor’s car on the wrong side of the road. He read a medical report which stated that a blood sample taken from Taylor’s

body showed an alcohol content of 180 milligrams of alcohol to 100 millilitres of blood. This was sufficient to make him completely incapable of having control of a motor car.