MOTORISTS AND THE COURTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 122, 25 May 1936, Page 6

MOTORISTS AND THE COURTS.

Two motorists were on Saturday sent to gaol—one for six months, the other for fifteen 'months —for reckless driving causing death. The sentences, which, considering the circumstances in each case, cannot be called severe, may perhaps be regarded as indicating the determination of the Supreme Court judges to do what lies in their power to reduce the scandalously high rate of motor fatalities. At least they compare favourably with the sentence passed in a Wellington case recently, when a man who had never had a license, but had a criminal record, and through negligent driving killed two people on the Hutt Road, got off with eighteen months' reformative detention. Yet it, is doubtful whether even the highest sentence yet passed on a reckless motorist for manslaughter has been equal to the sentence which would be passed if, for example, a man, by reckless shooting when outafter duck, took a human life.

"We are killing people at the rate of one a day, and twenty are being injured each day," said Mr. Semple when, in his speech 011 the Transport Amendment Bill, lie expressed his determination to do everything possible to reduce the "toll of the road." Everybody deplores the frequency of motor fatalities, but not everybody can do anything to prevent them. Our judges and magistrates can do something, and if they make it clear beyond doubt that motorists (and pedestrians, too) who risk their own and others' lives will, invariably and inevitably, be severely punished, the efforts of the Transport Department and other authorities to reduce the number of road fatalities will not be in vain.