DRIVING A CAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 1, 1 July 1938, Page 5

DRIVING A CAR

MOTORIST'S PART

WHERE RESPONSIBILITY

ENDS

Whether a motorist whose car breaks loose after he has parked it on a hill lean be held to have driven it without due care and attention, was a question decided in a reserved judgment delivered by Mr. A. M. Goulding, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court. Ivan Augustus Beaumont was charged under section 4, sub-section (1) of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act, 1936, with driving a- motor vehicle without due care and attention. Mr. Goulding said he did not think that that section covered a prosecution, and accordingly dismissed the information.

The facts were simple, said, the Magistrate. The defendant, at 12.20 p.m. on May 13, parked his car in Wellington Terrace on sloping ground and on the correct side of the road close to the kerb. He then left the car. Five minutes later the car, without interference by anyone,' moved off, and, no one being in control, it collided with another vehicle. The handbrake was then found to be partly on.

"It is to be noted that the old regulations (1933) made provision for motorists placing vehicles at rest, and imposed special duties on them when the car was on a grade," said Mr. Goulding. "These are now revoked. It seems to me that the ordinary rule for construction of the language" in this section should be applied, and that the words 'drives a motor vehicle on any road or other place to which the public have access' should be read and construed in their ordinary popular sense of 'causing a vehicle to be propelled on the road or public place.' The words, I think, import the idea of setting the vehicle in locomotion, resulting in the offence. Here all locomotion had ceased when the motorist stopped the vehicle, and up to that point it is not suggested he was guilty of want of due care.

"It must be remembered that the section is a penal one, and the Courts will construe such sections fairly but strictly, not unduly extending the provisions, and yet having regard to the attainment of the objects of the legislation.

"Under section 22 of the principal Act the Court, if it finds a motorist guilty of an offence in connection with the driving of a motor vehicle, has wide powers to endorse, suspend, or cancel a motorist's licence, and declare that he shall be disqualified from obtaining another licence for such time as the Court thinks fit. The-lat-ter provision is somewhat restricted in respect of a. first or second conviction under section 4 of the Amendment Act. . . .

\ "I do not, however, accept the proposition advanced by Mr. Macandrew (counsel for the defendant) that in all the circumstances when a motorist has brought his car to rest he could not be found guilty of driving without due care and attention. In driving it to the point at which he brought it to rest he may be guilty of the act: as for instance if he drives it to a point, say, in the middle of the road opposite the General Post Office, or stops opposite the entrance to a hospital or fire station. Apart, then, from any regulation actually meeting such a case he would, in my opinion, be guilty of driving it there without due care and attention and without reasonable consideration for other persons using the roadL"