Bridget Driscoll

Who was Bridget Driscoll?

Bridget Driscoll was the first pedestrian victim of an automobile accident in the United Kingdom. As she and her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy crossed Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, Driscoll was struck by an automobile belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company that was being used to give demonstration rides. One witness described the car as travelling at "a reckless pace, in fact, like a fire engine".

Although the car's maximum speed was 8 miles per hour it had been limited deliberately to 4 miles per hour, the speed at which the driver, Arthur James Edsall of Upper Norwood, claimed to have been travelling. His passenger, Alice Standing of Forest Hill, alleged he modified the engine to allow the car to go faster, but another taxicab driver examined the car and said it was incapable of exceeding 4.5 miles per hour because of a low-speed engine belt. The accident happened just a few weeks after a new Act of Parliament had increased the speed limit for cars to 14 miles per hour, from 2 miles per hour in towns and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.