Cars Smashed Into Each Other

CARS SMASHED INTO EACH OTHER

BILL JUDSON WAS A LIFE SAVER ON THE CAR.

ARCHIE WILKENSON AND EDWARD GROVES SWEPT UP THE PAVEMENT.

The people on Main st. on Saturday evening, were treated to the sensation of a railroad accident, in which no one was hurt, but much screaming was done and the front of two cars damaged. In the crowded condition of the streets with people and vehicles it seems a miracle that no one was run over as the heavy Detroit car came crashing down Main st.

When the 8:45 trolley car of the Detroit, Ypsilanti & Ann Arbor electric road from Detroit came up Packard st. and on to Main st., Motorman Updyke tried to reduce the speed of his car. To his astonishment the apparatus would not work and the car flew on with increasing speed. The air break also would not work. In trying to stop the car Motorman Updyke received two shocks knocking him down. The conductor had the trolley off the wire but got on again. Opposite the post office the car ran into a city car coming up from the Michigan Central depot. The collision was accompanied with a loud noise and so much electric fire as to cause an alarm to be given and call out the fire department. The motor men of both cars jumped just before the cars met. The Detroit car being the heaviest it received the least damage. The front of the city car was a mass of splinters. It was forced around the curve to Ann st. where both cars stopped. The electrical apparatus, the lamp, and heavy timbers of the Detroit car were smashed and bent, but not as band as the city car.

The street from the post office to where the cars stopped was covered with splinters and glass.

There were no passengers in the city car. In the Detroit car were Oil Inspector Judson and his deputy Archie Wilkinson, of Chelsea and six women. The latter wanted to jump out as the car went tearing along at the rate of 30 miles an hour or more. Mr. Judson with great presence of mind held the door shut refusing to let them out and trying to pacify them. If they had jumped from the car it would have meant instant death or great bodily injury. When the jar of the collision came it was so easy, that no one was hurt.

With the clash of the collision, with the fire from the electric wires nd the screaming of the people, the excitement on the street reached a high pitch. On Saturday evening the cause of the machinery of the Detroit car not working could not be ascertained. It was thought possible to have come from crossed wires.

Monday the car people state it was not moor man Updyke who ran the car Saturday evening, but no one about the Ann Arbor office seems to know the name of the motorman or conductor of the car. General Manager Merrill of the road said he had not yet been able to get enough facts to enable him to say who or what was to blame for the accident Saturday night. He had taken out car No. 21 on the track at Ypsilanti yesterday. It worked all right and everything was in place except one wire. He tried the brake of the car and that was also in good order. The accident so far seems to have been caused by some one loosing his head. If the Westinghouse air brakes are not good, the sooner it is known the better, and better for the people who travel in the cars.