MINOR TRAFFIC OFFENCES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27072, 22 June 1953, Page 8

MINOR TRAFFIC OFFENCES

PROPOSED NEW COURT PROCEDURE

TRAFFIC INSTITUTE APPROVES

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 21. Proposals by the Department of Justice for a simpler and more direct procedure for disposing of undefended minor traffic offences were unanimously approved at a meeting of the executive of the New Zealand Traffic Institute. The proposals provide generally for each Magistrate’s Court to fix its own code of standard penalties and to aim to do away with a formal summons and hearing where the accused admits his offence and does not dispute the penalty. The scheme, described in a letter to the institute from the Secretary of Justice (Mr S. T. Barrett), gave a tentative schedule of offences to be included. They were for motor vehicles failing to have a licence, no warrant of fitness, not having the prescribed lights, and parking offences and for bicycles not having the prescribed lights, not having brakes, for riding on the footpath and for not having a red reflector or a white mudguard. In outline, the scheme is that in any Court a Magistrate may issue a general direction io the registrar, authorising a special procedure to deal with all or any of the traffic offences set out in the scheme. The Magistrate can prescribe the class of offences for which the procedure might be adopted in that Court, prescribe the standard penalties for each class of offence and, if he thinks fit, prescribe different penalties for first, second and subsequent offences and vary the direction from time to time..