CYCLIST’S DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26229, 13 August 1946, Page 9

CYCLIST’S DEATH

FATALITY IN CAVERSHAM INQUEST CONCLUDED The inquest was concluded yesterday before Mr H. W. Bundle, S.M., sitting as coroner ; into the death on July 26 of a single man, Harvey Ean Wilson, aged 25, as the result of a collision between a cycle which he was riding and a motor car in, Marion street, Caversham, two days previously. The coroner's finding was tnat death was caused by injuries to the, medullary centres of the brain received in the collision. Sergeant A. Leadley conducted the inquiry for the police, Mr W. Ward represented the deceased’s relatives and Mr A. I. Wood appeared on behalf of the driver of the car involved in the accident. Dr W. V. MacFarlane, a house surgeon at the Dunedin Public Hospital, said that the deceased was unconscious when he was admitted to hospital at 1 p.m. on July 24. A fracture of the base of the skull was suspected, and it was found that this was the case and that there were grave lacerations of the brain. The patient died on July 26. „ Evidence was given by Leslie Victor Malcolm that he had seen the deceased leave his home to return to work. He was riding his cycle, a racing model. A few minutes later witness was called to the scene of the accident and saw the deceased lying on his correct side of the road. Constable J. L. Patterson produced a statement by the accused’s mother. This said that her son had served for five years and a-half in the armed services, three of them in the Middle East. Constables T. Mannix and G. Claridge gave evidence, of measurements taken at the scene of tile accident. Eric Alexander McMillan, a commercial traveller and driver of the motor car with which the deceased collided, said he was driving up Marion street in second gear at 15 to 20 miles an hour. He saw a young man on a cycle travelling very fast towards him. A parked motor truck obscured vision both for himself and for the cyclist, and the cyclist was almost on the car before witness saw him. He braked immediately, but travelled 23 feet before he stopped the car. He could have stopped in a shorter distance, but he was more concerned with seeing what had happened to the cyclist. He considered that the cyclist was travelling too fast down an incline and had swung out too wide on the bend. . ~ . The magistrate commented that racing cycles, fitted wtih low handlebars, were not the best model for use in public thoroughfares. It was a distressing fatality, and he could only find that the deceased died as the result of head injuries received In a collision with a motor car driven by McMillan.