Death of Bridget Driscoll facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bridget Driscoll
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Bridget Driscoll (circled)
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| Born |
Bridget Swift
1851/1852 Ireland
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| Died | 17 August 1896 (aged 44) Croydon, Surrey, England
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| Resting place | Queen's Road Cemetery |
| Known for | First recorded pedestrian to be killed by a motor car in Great Britain |
Bridget Driscoll (born around 1851, died August 17, 1896) was the first person in Great Britain to die after being hit by a motor car. This sad event happened in London.
Bridget was walking with her teenage daughter, May, and a friend, Elizabeth Murphy. They were crossing a road called Dolphin Terrace, which was inside the grounds of the Crystal Palace. A car from the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company was giving rides to show how it worked. Sadly, the car hit Bridget. One person who saw it said the car was going "like a fire engine," meaning it was moving very fast.
The Car and Its Speed
Even though the car could go up to 8 miles per hour (about 13 kilometers per hour), it was supposed to be limited to 4 miles per hour (about 6.4 kilometers per hour). The driver, Arthur James Edsall, said he was going at this slower speed.
However, a passenger in the car, Alice Standing, thought the driver had changed the engine to make the car go faster. Another driver checked the car and said it couldn't go faster than 4.5 miles per hour (about 7.2 kilometers per hour) because of a special engine part.
This accident happened just a few weeks after a new law was passed. This law had increased the speed limit for cars. Before, cars could only go 2 miles per hour in towns and 4 miles per hour in the countryside. The new law allowed them to go up to 14 miles per hour (about 22.5 kilometers per hour).
The Investigation
After Bridget's death, there was an official meeting called an inquest. A group of people called a jury listened to all the facts. The inquest lasted about six hours.
The person in charge, called the coroner, was Percy Morrison. He was from Croydon in Surrey. After hearing everything, the jury decided that Bridget's death was an "accidental death." The coroner said he hoped "such a thing would never happen again."
Sadly, many more accidents have happened since then. By 2010, experts estimated that about 550,000 people had died on roads in the UK.
Other First Fatalities
- Mary Ward (scientist), the first person in the world to die in a motor vehicle accident, in Ireland (1827–1869)
- Henry H. Bliss (1830–1899), the first person to die in a motor vehicle accident in the Americas
- Harrow on the Hill#Street accident fatality § Notes, the first motor car driver to die in Great Britain (1899)
- Elaine Herzberg, the first person to die after being hit by a self-driving car (2018)
