“No loophole for hip-flask driver”

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 20

“No loophole for hip-flask driver”

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 26. The Ministry of Transport believes that there is no loophole in the Transport Act which would enable a “hip-flask driver” to escape conviction on a charge of having excessive alcohol in his blood, according to a spokesman for the ministry.

He had been asked today to comment on a report from London that a motorist, John Hamilton, aged 25, had opened a loophole in the equivalent English legislation.

Mr Hamilton’s conviction for having excess blood

alcohol was quashed recently by the Court of Appeal in England.

After a motor accident Mr Hamilton was so shaken that he went into the nearest hotel and had three whiskies. A breath test showed a positive reaction and a laboratory test later showed he had 159 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.

The House of Lords upheld the Appeal Court’s decision.

Lord Guest said it had been submitted that unless Mr Hamilton was convicted it would leave a loophole in the act through which the “hip-flask driver” could escape. It was also contended that the result of the ruling would be the “absurdity” that drivers could always defeat the law and escape a just conviction by consuming ; alcohol before giving a speci-1 men for analysis. ; The Ministry of Transport!,

spokesman said in Wellington today that the ministry was “extremely proud” that loopholes found in the English act concerning driving offences had been covered in the New Zealand act. Under the New Zealand act there was a conclusive presumption against the driver that the proportion of alcohol in his blood at the time of the alleged offence was the same as the proportion of alcohol in the specimen of blood which he provided for the test.

i “In New Zealand the hips flask driver increases his I chances of conviction because of this presumption,” the I spokesman,said. “If he has an accident and pulls out a hip-flask and takes a swig of, say, brandy, we have good cause to suspect he has committed an offence because he has had |an accident and appears to !be drunk.”