Driver’s Hectic Mile In Runaway Crane

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31346, 17 April 1967, Page 1

Driver’s Hectic Mile In Runaway Crane

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 16.

A mobile crane driver guided his 20-ton charge for a mile before it hit a building when the drive shaft snapped and broke the brake hoses in Te Papapa on Saturday.

The man, Mr W. P. K. Pollock, of Pupuke road, Takapuna, leapt from the cab seconds before it was crushed by the jib of the crane when it hit the building. Mr Pollock was driving down the sloping O’Rorke road towards Church street about 2.30 p.m. “There was a bang as the shaft broke and a terrific clatter as the end slipped around, cutting the brake line,” he said. The crane gathered speed as it headed toward the Church street intersection. “I was hoping there would

not be too much traffic around. But I was wrong. There was one car coming. I tried to get across in front of it, but it dipped my back wheels.” Across the intersection, Mr Pollock drove the crane down the road leading to the Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company, Ltd. “She was starting to slow up on tiie handbrake, but I clipped the front of one building with the jib. It lost only a few weatherboards, though,” he said. “Then I saw two buildings with a tunnel between them. When I got closer I saw the jib was too high for the tun-

nel, so I decided it was time I got out.” By this time, the crane’s speed was about five miles an hour. Mr Pollock returned to Church street collision where he found the driver of the car, a woman, was not hurt. “I believe she had something to say about truck drivers in a hurry,” he said.