In Evers v. Davis, 86 N.J.L. 196, this court said, "a defendant although he cannot be heard to say that it was not his duty to obey the statute, may show what he did in his effort to obey it, leaving it to the jury to say whether such effort was what a reasonably prudent person would have done in view of the statute."

In Evers v. Davis,86 N.J. Law 196, the court quoted with approval the following: "The legislature must be assumed to know the law, and if upon common law principles such a statute would affect private rights it must have been passed in anticipation of that result.

In Evers v. Davis, 86 N.J.L. 196, Mr. Justice Garrison, speaking for this court (at p. 204), says: "Upon common law principles, therefore, when the legislature has by public statute established a certain standard of conduct in order to prevent a danger that it foresaw, which has in this regard forewarned the `ordinary prudent man,' and through him the defendant in a civil action, whose conduct must always coincide with this common law criterion.