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BBC News
27-05-2025
- BBC News
50 years since Dibbles Bridge, the UK's worst road crash
Fifty years since a coach crash in which 32 pensioners and their driver died, the man who was first on the scene still remembers a day that shattered the peace of a remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales. Lincoln Seligman was 25 and holidaying at his in-laws' cottage in Hebden with his wife when the coach landed in their garden on 27 May brakes had failed on a notorious descent known as Dibbles Bridge."I had never seen a dead body before and suddenly there were 33," he says. "Eventually they were all stacked up or laid out in the garden."All you could hear was the sort of ticking of the engine, which was hot. The driver had come partially through the windscreen."One just takes in the situation as it is and then you wonder what comes next, but it was pretty quiet." Forty-five mostly elderly women were on a day trip from Thornaby-on-Tees to the tourist honeypot of Grassington when the coach they were travelling in careered down a steep bank and landed on its roof. Only 13 passengers survived, making it the worst UK road accident by death Seligman, now 75, says it took at least an hour for the emergency services to arrive – as the rural holiday cottage had no telephone and they had to wait for a local farmer to call for one ambulance with a single driver arrived at first before the scale of the tragedy became clear, and the injured were taken to Airedale Hospital in Keighley rather than Leeds and Newcastle, which nowadays have major trauma centres."My wife and I were there on our own for most of that time and three boy Scouts who are now in their 60s were there too."It was pretty hard to get anybody out because it was a very old coach and the windows were crushed anyway, so to get anybody out was almost impossible."When the emergency services turned up, I don't think they had anything like lifting gear, so they were pretty much in the same situation as us. "I think the ones who were pulled out were the ones who made most noise and were probably the youngest."We did what we could but there was not much we could do." An inquest in July 1975 found the main cause of loss of life was the crushing of the victims between the concluded that the 45-seat Bedford/Duple coach belonging to Riley's Luxury Coaches crashed through Dibbles Bridge at the bottom of Finchale Hill, falling 16 to to the archives of Commercial Motor magazine, a passenger giving evidence from a wheelchair said when the coach started going downhill it went "faster and faster and the driver swore".Dorothy White, 62, organised the Yorkshire Dales visit. She had been running trips - known as "Auntie Dorrie's mystery trips" - for 30 owner of the coach company, Norman William Riley, 51, pleaded guilty to using a motor vehicle on which the braking system was not maintained in efficient working order and was fined just £ incident led to a tightening of safety measure for commercial coaches, including the inspection of braking systems on public service vehicles, and the introduction of brake later, in March 2021, a warning sign was erected on the road above Dibbles Bridge following a further three fatal crashes involving cyclists who had lost control and fallen over the Nelson, 32, was riding with Skipton Cycling Club when his brakes locked on the descent and he fell into the river below in 2014.A year later, Leeds General Infirmary cardiologist Dr George Ballard, 41, from Ilkley, fell 50ft into the River Dibb after he collided with the bridge and was thrown over the in 2020, American engineer Craig Barnhart, 66, fell from height from the stretch of road after the brakes on his e-bike barriers have since been McNally, operations director at the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK, says he does not think the incident would happen again because of a series of changes in the said: "A whole load of things have changed since then, the way vehicles are maintained, driver training, anti-lock braking systems - which you didn't have in those days - and they didn't have an annual MOT."The primary problem in this incident was that the brakes didn't work effectively. "They didn't have retarders at that time, and the retarder in effect takes the pressure off the brakes so there's resistance to the vehicle going down the hill before you actually use the brakes."Even if it did happen and went over the the wall as it did, the vehicle wouldn't collapse in the way that it did because of rollover protection. "Vehicles are much stronger and they're designed to be able to roll over and still keep their structural integrity effectively."The Driving Standards Agency's director of enforcement services, Marian Kitson, agrees, adding: "Effective and regular maintenance of buses and coaches is absolutely vital for public safety and the terrible crash at Dibbles Bridge still serves as a reminder 50 years on."In the time that's passed since this incident, standards in bus and coach manufacturing and maintenance have improved significantly." Thornaby town councillor Tina Large was 13 when the incident hit her own family. Her great-aunt had set off on the coach trip that morning."I just remember my mam coming and getting us all to go to my uncle Tony's, which was my aunt Margaret's house, and we all had to go upstairs and everyone was coming round and crying," she says."I was about 13, and it was just devastating to have lost someone. Even until today, Auntie Margaret still talks about her."She was a lovely, lovely jolly person."The incident lives large in the memories of people in Thornaby, and a memorial stone – which comes from a quarry near Hebden - sits in the town centre."Everybody was over the moon about the Dibbles Bridge memorial at the town hall. It's something that needs to be remembered," says Ms last of the 13 survivors of the crash had died by 2022."Someone's got to carry it on and remember these people. I take my grandkids down there and they are fascinated by it and tell the school about it. So hopefully it's carried on generation to generation." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Daily Mail
27-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Death in the Yorkshire Dales: How 32 housewives and driver died when coach plunged off 'Devil's Bridge' after its brakes failed in Britain's worst ever road disaster 50 years ago
It was a housewives' day trip that turned into the stuff of nightmares. Fifty years ago today, a packed coach crashed in the Yorkshire Dales after its brakes failed, killing 32 passengers and the driver. The tragedy at Dibbles Bridge, which left a further 13 people injured, was, and remains, Britain's worst road disaster. Today, a memorial service for those killed is being held in the North Yorkshire town of Thornaby, where the 46 occupants had travelled from. The coach passengers were all friends and neighbours who had paid £2.50 for the day trip. They had packed lunches with them and had planned to enjoy high tea. The coach's driver, Roger Marriott, 35, was powerless to stop his vehicle as it gathered speed down a 1,500-yard hill and then plunged 20feet off what was known locally as 'Devil's Bridge'. For it was at that spot 50 years earlier that almost the exact same accident had occurred, killing seven and injuring 14. Today's service will be led by the Bishop of Whitby, the Right Reverend Barry Hill. The coach was a 1967 Bedford VAM5, run by Yorkshire firm Riley's Luxury Coaches. It was carrying women on a day trip to Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales. The trip's organiser, Dorothy White, the mayoress of Thornaby, was among the victims. The 33 victims of the crash at Dibbles Bridge Gwendoline Dodsworth; Gladys Callaghan; Sylvia Worn; Eva Thomas; Edna Herron; Isabel Pratt; Kathleen Maud; Mabel Chisholm; Irene Groskop; Grace Harrison; Jean Smart; Roger Marriott (driver); Jennie Lowe; Jennie Butler; Rosaline Brown; Harriet Riley; Doris Howsden; Henrietta Pedley; Elsie Middleton; Elizabeth Hill; Freda Wilkinson; Ida Fisher; Dorothy White (former Thornaby mayor and trip organiser); Lilian Barclay; Henrietta Kirk; Margaret Mennell; Ada Chisholm; Hannah Forth; Eileen Ross; Hilda Gibbon; Betty Aitchison; Margaret Baldwin; Edith Woodhouse The disaster began at around 4pm on May 27. As the coach started to descend the hill on the road from Pateley Bridge, the driver realised his brakes were defective. His attempts to apply them caused them to heat up and then fail completely. An inquest would later put the brake failure down to poor maintenance. Having picked up enormous speed, the coach was unable to turn around a sharp bend near the bridge. It crashed through a parapet and plunged around 20feet into the garden of a cottage below. Landing upside down, the force of the impact crushed the roof inwards to within three feet of the chassis. One woman was thrown clear, whilst passengers who had not been killed instantly were left trapped. Firemen had to cut parts of the coach away to get to the dead and those were still alive. The injured were rushed to Airedale Hospital in nearby Keighley. Off-duty nurses and doctors were called in to work to help treat the deluge of patients. Thirty-two people died at the scene. The 14th initial survivor, 78-year-old Ada Christon, passed away later. Driver Mr Marriott survived the initial impact but succumbed to his injuries while trapped in the wreckage. His wife was among the injured. As he lay trapped, he told a woman who had rushed to help: 'My brakes failed... there was nothing there.' Elsie Townsend, who was visiting the Yorkshire Dales with her husband and children, told the Daily Mail: 'I ran to the front and saw a man trapped from his waist down and he was entangled with the engine. 'His right arm was trapped under the wreckage and his face was covered with oil, blood and shattered glass.' 'I asked if there were any children in it and he said no. I asked if he was the driver and he said yes. 'He was absolutely covered in oil. I had some tissues in my pocket and I wiped the blood, oil and glass from his face, eyes and ears.' She added: 'I sat next to him holding his hand and he started gasping for breath. I said: "Roger, you're not going to sleep are you?" 'He said: "No." And I said: "I'm holding your hand." 'It went all cold and suddenly the colour drained from his face. I called an ambulance driver but he took a look and said there was nothing he could do. 'The driver had died.' Margaret Robinson, then 35, survived with her mother. Both had head injures. Ms Robinson said: 'The coach kept going faster and faster down this very steep hill and I felt something was going to happen. 'There was a curve in the road and the driver seemed to be pulling on the wheel. 'The next thing I knew it tipped over. It seemed to go right out of control. 'We were lying on our backs with all the seats on our legs and lots of people strewn around.' Another of the injured,Mary Booth, said she could not recall the crash. She only remembered waking up on the grass next to the coach. She told the Mail how she held the hand of another survivor, Lillian McLeod as she lay nearby. The then 60-year-old said: 'She was calling my name and moaning. I stretched out and held her hand. I don't know whether it helped.' The youngest passenger was 17-year-old Madeline Pratt, who suffered head injuries but survived. She had been due to sit her A-level exams the following month and had joined her mother on the trip to have a break from revising. Her mother was killed in the crash. Back in Thornaby, 77-year-old George Watts, a friend of those on the coach, said at the time: 'It makes you feel so, so useless. These ladies did so much good, helped so many people. 'All of a sudden they are gone.' In 2022, a memorial to those killed was installed in Thornaby. The four-tonne tribute was made from stone sourced from a nearby North Yorkshire quarry. In the crash in 1925, a coach carrying a party of 40 York council officers plunged 20feet into Hebden Beck and overturned after the driver reported his brakes had burnt out. The driver, who survived, later said: 'I knew we were out of control and tried to make the best of it - but she gained speed quickly.'
