Disqualified For Failing To Ascertain Injury

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30998, 2 March 1966, Page 7

Disqualified For Failing To Ascertain Injury

“Het was een harde klap ” (“It wa, quite a decent bang") This was a Dutchwoman’s description, as given through an interpreter, of • car collision at the Bealey avenuePapanth road intersection on December 4, as a result of which Vance Edmund Stewart, a 17-year-oid schoolboy, faced charges of failing to give way at the traffic lights, failing to stop after an accident, and failing to ascertain if anybody was injured.

Stewart (Mr A. C. P. Tipping), who pleaded not guilty to the latter two charges, described the impact between his car and that of Antonia Anna Vermeulen, as “a clip,” and said that he had thought the collision so slight that there was no need to approach Mrs Vermeulen’s car (which had gone from view) to ascertain injury. He was convicted of failing to ascertain injury, and disqualified from driving for six months.

Mrs Vermeulen, a housewife, said through the interpreter that she had been driving east in Bealey avenue

when Stewart’s car “shot in front of her” as it made a right-hand turn from the south side of Bealey avenue into Papanui road. She had no chance of avoiding a collision.

Her passenger, Aiberdina Trimbach, a housewife, said that Stewart’s car had continued on up Papanui road without stopping. Their car, however, had stopped in the middle of the intersection, and then in Bealey avenue a little beyond the corner. Stewart, a pupil at St. Bede’s College, said that he had pulled up in Papanui road, about 100 yards from the corner, in the first available parking space, and in front of a bus. He found a tail-light broken, and a scratch on the paintwork of his car.

“When I saw how slight the damage was I discounted the chance of anyone being hurt in the other vehicle,” Stewart said. He looked back to the corner, but saw nothing unusual, and thought the other car had driven on. Traffic Officer J. E. S. Drain (prosecuting): Did you think about going back to the intersection to see if the other car had also pulled up beyond the corner? Stewart: At the time, I was quite confused. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Patrick John Ryall, a warehouseman, and a passenger in Stewart’s car, said that on looking back there was “noone at the corner, no confusion, no nothing.” Mr E. S. J. Crutchley, S.M., said he would accept Stewart’s evidence of stopping at the first available parking space and dismissed the charge of failing to stop. But he held that Mrs Vermeulen’s car had stopped on the intersection after the collision, and that Stewart ought to have seen it. “You were not justified, in fact or in law, in assuming that because of slight damage to your car noone else could possibly have been injured,” he told Stewart. Stewart was convicted and fined £2 for failing to ascertain injury, and disqualified from driving for six months, and on the charge of failing to give way at the traffic lights, to which he had pleaded guilty, was fined £2, with disqualification for three months—concurrent with the previous term. Stewart was also ordered to pay £2 witnesses’ expenses. Year’s Disqualification Motorists drawn up at compulsory stops, and looking to see if the way was clear, were entitled to assume that distant vehicles were approaching at regulation speeds, said the Magistrate, when convicting Ronald Percival Barnsley, a car salesman, of driving at a speed which might have been dangerous. Evidence was given that Barnsley had driven along Pages road, Wainoni, late at night on December 22 at a speed of 50 miles an hour, during which he passed the intersection of Breezes road (controlled by stop signs in his favour), and over a nearby pedestrian crossing, although not being used. Barnsley had pleaded not guilty to the charge of potentially dangerous driving. His counsel, Mr E. O. Sullivan, said that he admitted speeding, but claimed that his driving was not, in the circumstances, dangerous. In convicting Barnsley, the Magistrate fined him £B, saying that he took account of his financial circumstances, and imposed a mandatory disqualification from driving for one year.