MOTOR FATALITIES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 269, 6 August 1908, Page 7

MOTOR FATALITIES.

-THE BRAKES GIVE WAY. FIVE DEATHS. A RACING TRACK SMASH. (BY TEKORAPII—MESS ASSOCIATION —COPYiIIGIIT.) San Francisco, August 4. While a party was motoring in San Francisco, the emergency brakes snapped, and the motor car fell over a steep embankment. Mrs. M'Cormick and tier daughter, aged 18, and Mrs. O'Brien and. her son and baby, were killed. Tho M'Cormick and O'Brien families are well known in San Francisco. Two of the occupants of the car escaped uninjured. DANCER OF HIGH SPEEDS. CAR LEAVES TRACK, ONE MAN KILLED. London, August 4. A 76 horse-power Mercedes car, running 110 miles an hour on the Brooklands track, left the track and shot the occupants 100 feet across the river. Burke, tho mechanician, was killed, and Lane, the driver, was seriously injured. THE" SPEED FiEND. The motor racing track lias already claimed not a few victims, and, with speeds now up to over 100 miles an hour, tho list is certain to increase. The risks were bad enough when S. F. Edge did his 24 hours feat last year, and on tliat occasion the averago speed was but a modest 651 miles an hour. One account states: "Every hour that the race lasted the track became worse and worse. The pace of Mr. Edgo's car "and the two others which accompanied him ripped through the cement surface. until the banked course at the starting point looked like a scree-covered slope on a mountain. "Ten minutes before tho end of the race Mr. Edge's car bumped so severely in one of the many holes in the track that his glass wind-screen flow to pieces. Some of the fragments hit him in the face. Fortunately they struck him on the flat side, or the results might have been . serions. "A curious incident occurred in the early hours of the morning. A bat flew into tho radiator of Mr. Edge's car, and tho radiator had to be changed. Later in the morning tho car killed some birds pecking at a biscuit thrown on tho track. " Mr. Edge never showed any signs of distress. Now and then, when his car stopped for water, petrol, or fresh tyres, he got out and lay at full length on the ground for a few seconds.' But he always seemed, fresh and alert when it was time to Btart again. "A rousing cheer at a quarter to four in the afternoon announced that Mr. Edge bad accomplished the feat which many had declared to bo beyond human possibility driving 141-0 miles within the twenty-four hours. Undaunted by tho tremendous physical strain, ho devoted the last two hours to improving his record, adding another 141 miles.

" Blackburn, the mechanic, who rodo with Mr. Edge, gave an amusing description of how he tried to feed the latter while travelling at full spee'd. 'Again and again,' lie said, 'I tried to put a moat tabloid or a cocoa nil) in Mr. Edge's mouth,- but the jolting of the car shook them out of my numbed fingers. I wasted nearly a whole box of' tabloids in this way.'"