Gaol Term For Letting Disqualified Son Drive

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31029, 7 April 1966, Page 23

Gaol Term For Letting Disqualified Son Drive

(N.Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, April 6. “The only view I can take of this is that you, as a father, assisted your son to defy the Court,” Mr J. D. Murray, S.M., told Louis Alexander Buchanan, aged 42, a civil servant, in sentencing him to 14 days’ imprisonment on a charge of having aided a disqualified driver, to drive. Buchanan pleaded guilty to this charge and another of having allowed a car to be used contrary to a written order from a traffic officer for which he was convicted and fined £l5. On a third charge of permitting the use of a car without a warrant of fitness he was convicted and discharged.

Senior-Sergeant R. M. Schwass told the Court that as the result of an accident on the Port Chalmers highway on November 5, a 16-year-old boy appeared in the Children’s Court. Buchanan, the boy’s father, had permitted the boy to use the car in spite of the fact that he was a disqualified driver. A traffic officer had issued a written order that the car was not to be used until extensive repairs were carried out.

The Magistrate said he was appalled that a man should allow Ms 16‘year-old son to talk him into giving him the car in these circumstances. The Courts were entitled to expect parents’ co-operation.