LIFE PRESERVER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1938, Page 32

LIFE PRESERVER

THE CRASH HELMET

CORONER'S STRONG ADVICE

"I am satisfied that 50 per cent, of the young men who died because of injuries they received when thrown from their motor-cycles would be alive today if they had worn a helmet that would have given protection to the head," said the Coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, when returning a verdict at an Auckland inquest regarding the death of Frederick Sake-r, aged 20, single, of Greenfield Road, Epsom, who died on May 12 as the result of a motor-cycle accident.

It was a pity, said Mr. Hunt, that something was not done by motorcyclist organisations to see that their members wore crash helmets. Saker's case was the third or fourth in the last few weeks in which the rider was killed through being thrown from his machine on to the road.

James Anderson, a truck driver, said that oh May 10 he was a pillion rider on the machine driven by Saker. They were proceeding to Auckland from Otahuhu, and along the Great South Road the speed was estimated at between 45 and 50 miles an hour. About half a mile from Penrose the motor-cycle failed to round a. bend and crashed into a stone wall. Saker was thrown on to the road and the motor-cycle burst into flames. One of the wheels came off, but whether that happened before the accident or as the result of it the witness could not say. He thought the accident was due to some mechanical trouble.