“PUSH-BIKE” FATALITY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 234, 10 September 1924, Page 5

“PUSH-BIKE” FATALITY.

EVIDENCE AT INQUEST. (Per Press Association.) Wellington, Sept. 10. At the inquest touching on the death of Albert Edward Hollway, following on injuries resulting from a collision with a boy cyclist in Grey street, an eye-witness said he saw a man walking across the roadway and a cyclist coming along in the ordinary way. He sounded a warning, then the bicycle struck the man below the knee and he fell. The boy lost his balance and also fell.

The boy, Ronald Roper,, according to the police evidence, stated that as he approached the street intersection a motor car was going in the opposite direction and deceased, who was walking across, stopped as if to allow the car to pass. The boy continued along the middle of the road, and when almost opposite the man the latter moved forward quickly, stepping in front of the bicycle before the boy could stop. He had run into the man and fell off the machine. He had been riding a bicycle for three years. The inquest was adjourned. Giving evidence the boy, Ronald Roper, said the machine struck deceased lightly, on the right leg. The impact did not carry him past where Holloway fell. Deceased was watching a passing motor car. The coroner, in returning a verdict that deceased died from a fractured skull through being knocked down by a bicycle ridden by Roper, remarked that it was an accident likely to occur once in a thousand times. At the rate the man was walking and the boy was riding, no one would expect an accident to happen. In a great majority of cases the bicycle would have struck tho man and he would not have been knocked down. It must have caught him off his balance.