NEGLIGENT DRIVING CAUSING DEATH

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27225, 17 December 1953, Page 13

NEGLIGENT DRIVING CAUSING DEATH

CONVICTION AT TEMUKA (From Our Own Reporter) TIMARU, December 16. “I think the defendant was travelling too fast for the conditions prevailing at the time of the accident. If he was able to see then he should have seen the deceased before he did and if he was unable to see then he should have reduced his speed,” said Mr E. A. Lee, S.M., in the Temuka Magistrate’s Court yesterday when convicting Daniel Bernard O’Connor (Mr B. J. Petrie) on a charge of negligently driving a car on November 8 and causing the death of Horace Colville. O’Connor was fined £2O, ordered to pay costs and witnesses’ expenses, and had his licence suspended, and was disqualified from obtaining another for 18 months. O’Connor pleaded not guilty. On a charge of not being in possession of a current warrant of fitness O’Connor was convicted and discharged.

Sergeant Bisset, for the police, said that about 10.15 p.m. on November 8 Colville, a farmer, aged 88, left the home of a friend to return to his own house. It was a foggy night and O’Connor, driving south, had struck Colville, who was killed instantly. For the defendant, Mr Petrie said that Colville had been wearing dark clothes against the dark background of a damp asphalt road. The defendant’s speed had been estimated at between 35 to 40 miles an hour.