DISGRACEFUL ROAD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22191, 19 August 1935, Page 10

DISGRACEFUL ROAD

COMMENT BY CORONER FATAL MOTOR ACCIDENT TEN DANGEROUS CORNERS [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT] PUTARURU, Saturday Following upon a motoring accident on the Putaruru-Tapapa road on August 9, when a Putaruru motorist, Mr. Ernest William Jupp, aged 23, died of injuries received when his motor-car capsized over a bank, an adjourned inquest was held before Mr. H. K. McDormott, coroner, at Putaruru last evening. In finding that deceased had died ns a result of intornal hemorrhage caused through being crushed by an overturning car, the coroner considered that the driver of a truck met by deceased 011 a corner, John Clarence Martin, was in 110 way to blame. Mr. McDermott commented in definite terms on the road upon which the fatality occurred. In his opinion, the road was a disgrace as a main highway, and he suggested that the police, in their report to the Minister of Transport, should bring its dangerous condition under his notice. In its four-mile length there wero no fewer than ten dangerous corners as well as two bad approaches to bridges. Evidence was given by J. C. Martin, a lorry-driver employed by G. L Martin, Limited, carriers, Putaruru, that at a sharp bend on the road, when he was travelling at about 20 miles an hour on his correct side, he met a car travelling in the opposite direction. He thought that there would be a collision and applied his brakes. The car swerved to the left and as he passed it he looked back and saw the car go over a bank.

Redgar Musker, a .farmer who was working in a milking shed about 50 yards from the scene of the accident, considered that the accident was due entirely to the speed at which deceased was travelling. Constable T. J. Cotter, of Pntaruru, said that skid marks made by deceased's car showed that deceased had swerved to the left on reaching the corner and had travelled straight out to the left-hand bank. The car had evidently been straightened up, and, travelling on the extreme left of the road, it had then tipped and rolled over.