The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1936. MOTORS AND ACCIDENTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 171, 21 July 1936, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun

TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1936. MOTORS AND ACCIDENTS

For the cause that, lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, Awl the good that ice can do.

New Zealand is usually credited with being exceeded only by the United States and Canada in the number of motor vehicles pethead of the population. The total number licensed on March 31, 1933, was 193,844; two years later it had risen to 209,462; and at March 31 last it was 225/247. These figures must always be kept in mind in any discussion of the motor accident problem, which is rightly causing great concern just now to the public and to the magistrates who have to administer the law. It follows from the figures showing the rapid increase in the number of vehicles on the road that the traffic risk is constantly increasing, for both motorist and pedestrian. It follows, further, that a motor car mechanically defective, or one incompetently or recklessly driven, is now a greater potential menace than it was when the number of other motor vehicles 011 the road was smaller. In these facts resides the justification for the resolute efforts which the Minister of Transport has proclaimed his intention of making in order that human life shall be safer 011 the highways. Two experienced magistrates commented yesterday 011 the peculiarly difficult problem which continually confronts them in the persons of men, otherwise of good character, who have been caught in a state of intoxication when driving. Such men are not criminals iy the public eye, and magistrates are most understandably reluctant to send otherwise good 'citizens to prison. But, as magistrates are admitting, heavy fines and the cancellation of licenses are not proving an adequate deterrent to such offences. Is there, then, any escape from the conclusion that the small minority of motorists which, in the face of repeated warnings, persists in taking the risk of accident through intoxication, must be deemed also to take the risk of imprisonment? It is certain that if a man were proved to have gone out in an intoxicated state to shoot game, and to have by "accident" killed or maimed another human being, no magistrate would fail to send him to prison. From the point of view of the victim (and of the community) it is immaterial whether the lethal weapon is a gun 01* a car. The suggestion of Mr. Levvcy, S.M., "that these eases are steadily forcing a position in which legislation will have to be passed removing any chance of fines in these matters," goes too far, and if adopted it might even make more difficult the problem it is intended to solve. Some motorists have been fined because they have been found, under the influence of liquor, asleep in their cars on the side of the road. Would any magistrate like to pass a sentence of imprisonment in such a case? The public has much more confidence in the discretion of the magistrates than it has in the ability of Parliament to pass a law which would not lead to a great deal of injustice and harsh punishment. But public sentiment would support an announcement by the magistrates—and there is a need for uniformity in these matters —that where a motorist through intoxication (or through sober recklessness) causes death or injury, only one form of punishment will be considered.