A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 160, 22 June 1932, Page 5

A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE

CYCLIST UNDER COODS TRUCK LEVEL CROSSING COLLISION AT HASTINGS. A miraculous escape from serious injury, if not death, was experienced by Allen Patchett, a member of the crew of H.M.S. Diomede at present on leave in Hastings when he was knocked off his motoi cycle at the St, Aubyn street crossing, Hastings, last evening by a line of trucks that were being shunted off the 6 o’clock goods train. The shunting official was in attendance at the crossing at the time that the train was shunting and as a car was approaching from the west he signalled danger by means of his lamp. The car pulled up immediately, but the motor cycle shot out from behind it and proceeded over the crossing just as the trucks came across. The cycle ran right across the front of the first truck and was caught by means of the brake handle. Patchett was thrown crosswise onto the line, but by a piece of good fortune, did not bocome tangled up in any way with his machine. The shunter immediately signalled the engine driver to pull up, but there were eight trucks and this was not accomplished before they had travelled about 30 or 40 feet. Patchett was rolled over and over in front of the trucks, his cycle being so caught as to form a sort of cowcatcher. which levered him along. Had this not been so Patchett would have been caught across the two lines. As it was he escaped without any injury whatever. His machine was badly damaged.