Will Front Lifeguards be Fitted to Buses ?
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FOR many years efforts have been made to design a satisfactory form of lifeguard which could be fitted to the front of motor vehicles, and particularly to buses. We have ourselves conducted experiments with. some of these. In the main, the attempts have been confined to a form of guard resembling that utilized on the tramcar, in which pressure of a body on a swinging plate at the front of the vehicle causes a scoop-type guard to be dropped in front of the wheels, but this is a type which cannot well be applied in the case of the ordinary motor vehicle, as the wheels come too far forward and the time allowance between the touching of the trigger and contact with the inner scoop is insufficient to permit this fully to drop. Therefore, it would appear that for the bus and other vehicles, designed as they are at present, the guard would have to be of the fixed type.
We consider the matter worthy of further attention owing to the fact that a patent has recently • been sealed for the largest company operating buses in London and referring to a type of guard which, if the vehicle comes into collision with a pedestrian walking in the ordinary manner, causes him to rest on the guard, in a sitting position, his safety being further ensured by the provision of a rail which he can grasp. The guard really serves a dual purpose, for it also constitutes a fender which may obviate some of the present consequences of a collision between two vehicles.
That a satisfactory form of front lifeguard would prove a great advantage is undoubted, for, during the years in which side lifeguards have been employed, it may be said with truth that hundreds of lives have been saved through them, and if the same happy result could be obtained from the use of front lifeguards, then they should be given every consideration.
Many a pedestrian trapped in front of a bus could have saved himself if there had been something suitable for him to hold as a means for preventing him from being forced under the wheels ; butfin the ordinary bus there is only a radiatorprotecting bar and that joining the dumb-irons, and neither of these projects sufficiently from the radiator to protect the pedestrian from the wheels, as is the ease with the guard to which we refer above.