SEARCH FOR A MOTORIST.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13492, 11 June 1914, Page 3

SEARCH FOR A MOTORIST.

The motorist in England who knocks people over and drives away has to evade not only the police, but the elaborate organisation of his fellowmotorists. One of the worst of such cases occurred near London a few weeks ago, when a man and a woman C3 Tcling home at night were knocked down by a motorist who was on his wrong side; The motorist raced off without even enquiring as to the condition of the two people, one of whom was fatally injured. "When the last mail left England, a week had elapsed since the accident,' but the driver had not come forward, and no one had been able to get on his track. But both the police and the Automobile Association were determined that he should be found. The means of identification were slender. The make of the car was known, arid also the fact that it had a single headlight, and had lost a grease-cap from the front. As the cycle was carried forty-two feet, it is inferred that the speed must have been thirty miles an hour. The 500 scouts of the Automobile Association, which has over 85,000 members, and whose patrol service, extending all over the country, costs more than £50,000 a year to maintain, had joined the police in the hunt for the runaway car. According to the "Daily Mail" each scout knows practically every car in report by telegram or by telephone any his own district, and is instructed to circumstances that seem suspicious. "We are anxious to do everything in our power to bring reckless motorists to justice," said the chairman of the Association to an interviewer. "They are the common enemy of motorists and of foot-passengers; they are entitled to no mercy from any quarter. I can assure the general public that we of the Association exercise none. When trustworthy evidence is placed before us of misconduct of this character on the part of a member, that member ie expelled. That has happened several times during my chairmanship."