MOTOR THEFTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19981, 24 December 1926, Page 14

MOTOR THEFTS.

DEMAND FOR SEVERER PENALTIES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 18. There is an outcry in Sydney against the lenient treatment which the magistrates generally are meting out ot motor thieves, and against the tendency of those dispensing justice to treat these offenders merely as “joy-riders,” after they have driven stolen cars at a merciless speed and left them badly damaged. The evil Is rampant. Associated with it is a growing practice to take cars and leave them after divesting them, of practically every removable part. Minder the amended Crimes Act magistrates are now empowered to imprison these offenders, but very few indeed have been sent to gaol. Not a few car owners are to blame in a measure for leaving their cars about the city without effective locks, or for neglecting to lock them when they are fitted with these safety devices. For the motor thievds there is now an almost illimitable field in Sydney, where, in the metropolitan area, there are now more than 101,000 vehicles. Tho growth of the motor traffic is reflected in the fact that in New South Wales to-day there are more-motor vehicles than telephone subscribers. One almost fears to try to visualise' the traffic problem in Syd ■ oy, in, say, another decade, for although Ihe motor traffic alone is fifty limes us large as it was ton or fifteen years ago Sydney’s main streets are no wider to-day, but vastly more crowded, nor are the corners less angular.