Fellow "offenders" photographed

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 1

Fellow "offenders" photographed

A milk vendor charged with failing to keep his truck to the left produced photographs of City Council vehicles also using the wrong side of several Christchurch streets, when he appeared before Mr H. J. Evans, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday.

Counsel for Ronald Joseph Mason (Mr R. K. Godfrey) argued that although “two wrongs don’t make a right*' his client believed that his use of the right-hand side of the road while delivering milk had “the blessing of the authorities.”

His photographs were produced as exhibits and showed Christchurch City Council refuse and waterworks trucks using the right-hand side and even the middle of the road.

One showed a traffic officer on a motor-cycle having passed one of the refuse trucks.

The Magistrate: Your client has been a very busy man, Mr Godfrey.

Mason had previously been told by a traffic officer that he could use the wrong side of the road during the hours of darkness providing he used the truck lights and his own discretion over safety, said Mr Godfrey.

Referring to the traffic regulations, Senior Traffic Officer J. McMorran said that Government and council trucks engaged on public works were permitted to use the right-hand side of a road—although they did not escape responsibility for an accident Mason was convicted and discharged.