Driscoll was born in Ireland but living in Croydon, Surrey with her husband and children at the time of her death. She had planned a three-day trip to London to attend a League of the Cross festival. She was in the company of her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy and was crossing Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London when she was struck by the driver of a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company that was being used to give demonstration rides. One witness described the car as being driven at “a reckless pace, in fact, like a fire engine”.
Although the car’s maximum speed was 8 miles per hour (13 km/h), it had been limited deliberately to 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h), 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 (7.2 km/h) because of a low-speed engine belt. The collision happened just a few weeks after a new act of parliament had increased the speed limit for cars to 14 miles per hour (23 km/h), from 2 miles per hour in towns and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.
It’s interesting how cultural speed expectations are. So back in 1896 a car going 4.5 miles per hour was really booking it - and I have no doubt it probably was a poor judgenent to reach such speeds considering the poor state of the roads with ample pedestrians and horse carriages going everywhere, lack of rules and training and because the roads were not at all optimized for car travel. But now that ‘reckless’ pace would get you causing an accident for the opposite reason.
Enforcement surely plays a part, too. If you know the speed limit and that you’ll be busted for sure for going a hair over in a particular stretch, then you’ll probably be on your best behavior. If it’s literally never enforced such that everyone is accustomed to going as fast as seems prudent to themselves, though…
It’s interesting how cultural speed expectations are. So back in 1896 a car going 4.5 miles per hour was really booking it - and I have no doubt it probably was a poor judgenent to reach such speeds considering the poor state of the roads with ample pedestrians and horse carriages going everywhere, lack of rules and training and because the roads were not at all optimized for car travel. But now that ‘reckless’ pace would get you causing an accident for the opposite reason.
Enforcement surely plays a part, too. If you know the speed limit and that you’ll be busted for sure for going a hair over in a particular stretch, then you’ll probably be on your best behavior. If it’s literally never enforced such that everyone is accustomed to going as fast as seems prudent to themselves, though…