Supreme Court Driver Found Not Guilty Of Fatal Negligence

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 16

Supreme Court Driver Found Not Guilty Of Fatal Negligence

Terence William Ealem, aged 21, a driver, who struck and fatally injured an 80-year-old cyclist while driving a five-ton truck on the morning of September 5 last, was found not guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday of a Charge of negligent driving causing death. Mr Justice Macartfaur discharged the accused. The jury took 45 minutes to reach its verdict. The accused pleaded not guilty to the charge. He was represented by Mr G. R Lascelles. Mr C. M. Roper appeared for the Crown. Mr Roper, outlining the Crown case, said the cyclist. Malcolm Goss, was travelling along Durham street and the accused driving east along Moorhouse avenue. Goss was on the accused’s right. The accused’s truck was laden with more than five tons of concrete, and was travelling at 28 to 30 miles an hour.

The left front of the truck apparently hit the cyclist, who was thrown to the left. He suffered fractures of the skull and died before his arrival at Christchurch Hospital. The cycle was wrecked, said Mr Roper. The accused told police he did not see Goss until the last moment, and could not tell in which direction he was travelling. “The accused said that while travelling along he was looking for a letter box as he had letters to post. He also told police the cyclist must have been obscured by

a ‘blind spot’ in the cab,” said Mr Roper.

An eye-witness to the accident, Norman Thomas King, a plumber, said Goss was thrown practically the width of Durham street in the impact. Difficulty of Vision

George Edward Palmer, a senior vehicle inspector of the Transport Department, said he found the brakes and steering of the truck were in perfect order. The truck was in good mechanical order and thoroughly roadworthy.

Palmer said the driver’s visibility would be normal for a truck of its size. “Door pillars in heavy trucks do present quite a difficulty as far as the blind spot is concerned,” he said. In a statement produced by the police, the accused said he had looked to his right and saw the way was clear along Durham street. He must have missed seeing the cyclist behind the blind spot of the cab. It was only when he looked to the front again that he saw the cyclist. Mr Roper, in his final address, said the key to the whole accident was the accused’s admission that just before the collision he had been looking for a box to post some letters. “If he was not paying attention to other traffic but was looking for a letter box I suggest that would be negligent driving,” Mr Roper said Defence Submissions

Mr Lascelles called no evidence for the defence. In his submissions he said the crucial question was whettier the accused was looking for a letter box immediately before the collision. There was no clear evidence that he had been.

He was not driving recklessly or carelessly and kept to his proper side of the road.

“The evidence showed quite clearly that as the accused approached the intersection he kept a proper lookout,” Mr Lascelles said. He looked to the left and right, then to the front, and was able to describe the traffic in the vicinity. “Only one circumstance escaped him; he never saw the cyclist travelling slowly across the intersection.” Mr Lascelles submitted the reason for this was the closeness of the accused to the door pillar on the right of the cab At some stage this would certainly have interrupted his view ahead, and robbed him of his view of the cyclist.