CRASH INTO HILL.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20540, 15 February 1935, Page 5

CRASH INTO HILL.

Motor-car’s Wild Career at Sumner. PASSENGER INJURED. A runaway motor-car crashed into the rocks at the side of the hill on the Evans Pass Road about half a mile from the School for the Deaf yesterday afternoon, and after shooting most of its load of empty glass bottles on to the road, came to rest right side up in the Waterfall Bend. The driver, Frederick Albert Underhill, of 15, Allen Street, Sydenham, was unhurt, but his passenger, Mr Frank Minchington, who jumped from the speeding vehicle before it struck, suffered a dislocation of the knee and severe facial injuries. The news of the accident was brought into Sumner by a motor cyclist who narrowly escaped colliding with the car as it rushed down the steep part of the road. Constable Johns was smartly on the spot, and Mr Minchington, who was conscious, was quickly conveyed to the public hospital. It appears that the car was returning from Lyttelton with a load of empty bottles, and was coming down .the steep, part of the road on the Sumner side below the top of the hill when the brakes refused to hold and the vehicle rapidly gained speed down hill. Approaching a curve the swaying car threw some of its load off and the driver, realising that he could not negotiate the sharp bend at the waterfall, drew into the bank and struck the kerbing of a cross drain. The impact scattered the rock work and stripped the near side wheel from its spokes. The front axle crashed to the asphalt and was torn from the undercarriage, leaving the front work a tangled mass, and bringing the runaway to a stop. A few yards further on the car must have crashed head on to a steep rock cutting. Under the circumstances the driver had a remarkable escape. For yards the road was littered with broken glass, which had to be cleared away before motor traffic could pass the spot.