Negligence, Due care of plaintiff. If a man on his way to his place of work, and having no occasion for haste, alights from an electric car at the side of the street where to reach the entrance to his place of work he has to cross the parallel track of the street railway, and if, having passed around the rear end of the car from which he has alighted, he looks up before stepping on the rails of the other track and sees a car approaching on the other track so rapidly that he does not "have a chance to stop or step back," and to save himself makes a leap for the other side of the track and is struck by the fender of the car, and is injured, he cannot recover for his injuries thus caused, even if the corporation operating the car was negligent, he as matter of law being guilty of negligence which contributed to his injury, and he cannot relieve himself from the consequences of his negligence by showing that in hastening to cross the track he relied on a sign near the crosswalk on which were the words "Go slowly" and on the fact that it was the "custom of cars" moving on the track where he was struck to "slow up" considerably or to come to a standstill in approaching a car which had come from the opposite direction and from which passengers were in the act of alighting.
One who needlessly rushes into danger cannot invoke, in the emergency created by his own negligence, the doctrine which applies to a sudden peril.
LORING, J.
We are of opinion that as matter of law the plaintiff was guilty of negligence which contributed to the injury, and for that reason the judge was right in directing a verdict for the defendant. The case comes within Madden v. Boston Elevated Railway, 194 Mass. 491, and cases there cited. See also Holian v. Boston Elevated Railway, 194 Mass. 74; Beirne v. Lawrence Methuen Street Railway, 197 Mass. 173.
The plaintiff was not entitled to go to the jury on his right to rely and his reliance in fact on the sign "Go slowly," and on the practice of the defendant in causing the other cars to "slow down" or stop under circumstances like those in the case at bar. He looked before he stepped upon the track, saw the car and yet went across. See Casey v. Boston Elevated Railway, 197 Mass. 440.
Neither can the plaintiff invoke the doctrine of one put in sudden peril. If he was walking so fast that he could not stop when he saw the car, that was in itself negligence. A plaintiff cannot invoke the doctrine of sudden peril to extricate himself from the position into which he has come through his own negligence. He testified that being too late for the 7:30 gang of workmen he could not go to work until 8:30, and that having fifty-five minutes to spare he was in no hurry.
Exceptions overruled.