SENT TO PRISON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27391, 17 May 1950, Page 10

SENT TO PRISON

Driver Of Trolley Bus INTOXICATION CHARGE PA CHRISTCHURCH, May 16. “ Having regard to the fact that you were ii) charge of a public vehicle, and in view of the warnings whicn have been issued from this Bench in the past month, it is my duty to sentence you to 14 days’ imprisonment,” said Mr F. F. Reid, S.M., when convicting John Stewart Tranter, aged 39, a bus operator, in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Tranter was charged with being found in a state of intgxication while in charge of a trolley bus in Cathedral Square on May 12. He pleaded not guilty. Dr F. L. Scott said he had examined Tranter, and considered he was very drunk and not fit to be in charge of a vehicle. Tranter’s speech was slurred, and he was very unsteady on his feet. Similar evidence was given by a Tramway Board inspector, the constable who arrested Tranter, and a sergeant of police. Mr B. G. Dingwall, for Tranter, submitted that under the regulations under which the charge was laid, a trolley bus was removed from the category of motor vehicle. It was in a separate class—trackless trolley omnibus. He also claimed that Tranter’s state of health had contributed to his condition.

Tranter would say he had had only two glasses of beer in an hotel and half a bottle at home that day, said Mr Dingwall, but Tranter, was suffering from influenza, and had taken sulpha tablets. The magistrate ruled that a trolley bus came within the meaning of a motor vehicle as defined by the Motor Vehicles Act, 1924.