SIDECAR PASSENGER IS CYCLING

Evening Star, Issue 20254, 15 August 1929, Page 12

SIDECAR PASSENGER IS CYCLING

AN IMPORTANT POINT [Per United Press Association.! AUCKLAND, August 15. Mr Justice Ostler gave judgment for the defendants in a claim for £SOO against the Commercial Union lusur ance Company, brought by the widow of Stanley Horace Raster, who died in January 1927, from injuries sustained in a motor cycle accident, when a passenger in the sidecar. The defence ■raised was that the insured man was, at the time of the accident, engaged in motor cycling, and a proviso in the policy excluded injury, while motor cycling. His Honour said counsel for the plain tiff had admitted that if a girl rode pillion-wise she was engaged in motor cycling. Although it was true that the attachment of a sidecar made a motor cycle more stable, the judge considered that, in ordinary popular language, the occupant of a sidecar was engaged in motor cycling equally with the rider of the car. It was somewhat remarkable that the point in this case did not seem to have come up for decision either in New Zealand, England, or Australia. For the reasons stated, concluded His Honour, “I have come very reluctantly to the conclusion that plaintiff cannot succeed, and there must be judgment for the. defendant company, with costs according to scale.