ABSTRACT
On 17 August 1896, Mrs Bridget Driscoll was crossing the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, in the company of her teenage daughter, May, when she was hit by a vehicle powered by a Roger-Benz engine, driven by Mr Arthur Edsall of Upper Norwood. Mrs Driscoll died shortly afterwards. At the inquest, the Croydon coroner, William Percy Morrison, is said to have expressed the hope that “such a thing would never happen again”.1 The unfortunate Mrs Driscoll thus became Britain’s fi rst pedestrian to be killed by a petrol-fuelled motor car, whilst the incident itself is said to have been the fi rst time that the term “accident” was used in such a context.2 The rest, as they say, is history.3
