202 Pa. 145 | Pa. | 1902
Opinion by
On the whole testimony the jury may have reached a wrong conclusion in this case, but the court could not have withdrawn it from them. The facts developed by the testimony for the plaintiff were these. The plaintiff with two other persons was riding in an open carriage going south on Madison street, Chester, towards Fifth street, which crosses it at right angles. On Fifth street is a single track of the defendant’s road, on which cars are run in both directions. The horse was on a slow trot estimated at six miles an hour, and all three occupants of the carriage looked and listened for the approach of a car. When within nine feet of the house line on the north side of Fifth street, the driver checked his horse, leaned over the dashboard, and looked west for a car. From this point he could see the track for a distance of eighty feet west of the house line, and probably 100 feet from his position in the carriage. He then looked east, and turning again to the west saw a car thirty feet west of the crossing and about fifty feet from him. The horse had not come to a full stop and was then so near the track that the driver, in order to avoid a collision, turned abruptly to the east and drove rapidly in the direction in which the car was moving. He was unable to keep ahead of the car, or to get the carriage off the track before he was overtaken by the car. The collision occurred at a point a few feet east of Madison street. The car was a water car used for sprinkling streets, and was running at the rate of twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, and no notice was given of its approach to the crossing.
The driver was not required to stop before attempting to cross the track, but it was his duty to look when in a place where he had a view of the track in the direction from which a car might be expected to come, and to continue to look as he approached it. Ordinarily on a city street the house line is the proper place from which to look, and looking from a point back of the house line where the view is obstructed does not relieve from the charge of contributory negligence. But if the act of looking, commenced at a point back of the house line, continues
The judgment is affirmed.