DRUNK IN A MOTOR CAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18946, 21 August 1923, Page 11

DRUNK IN A MOTOR CAR

YOUNG MAN FINED. In the City Police Court yesterday afternoon, before Mr H. W. Bundle. S.M., Arnold Vaughan Sutton pleaded guilty to a charge of being drunk while in charge of a motor car. Sub-inspector Bccles said that the case presented some rather unusual features. On tho afternoon of Saturday, August 11, tho defendant and some others hired a taxi driven by a man named Hall. They wore taken to the Fitzroy Hotel, where tho passengers had some drink. They then drove up Cargill road, and by this time people were returning from the football match. At the corner of Reid road a boy was knocked down, and he subsequently died. Hall got out of the car to attend to the boy, and the defendant, who was very drunk, started it, running along the road for a .chain. Ho then backed down tho road for a chain, and finally crashed into a telegraph pole. A young man who was nearby then got into tho car and stopped the engine, and tho defendant w'as arrested by a constable. Apart from tho damage to the car, the fact that the defendant had no right to use the car, and the fact that by moving it ho made the collection of evidence ag to tho place of tho accident more difficult, he had no right to drive a car in the state be was, especially as there was a large crowd of people about. Tho defendant said that ho had, at the instigation of his friends, moved tho car to allow tho tram traffic to pass. The trouble had arisen through his arm getting caught in the control, and he had changed tho engine into reverse, instead of into neutral.

The Magistrate said that it was not an ordinary case of someone being drunk while in charge of a motor car. One of tho passengers had, in the absence of the driver, tried to move tho car away, and, being drunk, ho had made a muddle of it. His Worship said ho could not treat it as an ordinary case, and fined tho defendant 40s.