Compensating Road Victims

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30085, 20 March 1963, Page 12

Compensating Road Victims

(N.Z. Preu Association) AUCKLAND, March 19. Every victim of a road accident should receive compensation regardless of who was responsible for the accident, said Mr D. R. Harris, in Auckland today.

Mr Harris, an Auckland University graduate, is a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, a senior tutor and a tutor in law there. Next month he will present to the New Zealand law conference in Auckland his ideas and proposals for

a comprehensive insurance scheme for motor accidents

Mr Harris said today he understood that a special committee to advise the Government on “absolute responsibility” had been set up by the Minister of Justice. This was basically the same thing approached from a different angle. “At present,” said Mr Harris, “aU compensation is settled on the basis of responsibility for negligence The person responsible has to pay. This is wrong.

“In some, a court would decide that no party could be held negligent. “By all means the blame should be decided by a court and the offender punished

under the criminal law," he said. “But the principle of awarding damages only where blame could be laid should be abandoned “Roughly, my ideas would correspond to the principle of workers’ compensation in factories, but applied to accidents on the road.” Such a scheme should be set up either by the Government or through insurance companies assisted by the Government. In his address to the law conference Mr Harris will also speak on the question of the Government assuming responsibility for the compensation of victims of crimes of violence. This, too, he strongly supports.