INSTRUCTOR TO BLAME

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16908, 23 March 1929, Page 5

INSTRUCTOR TO BLAME

UNUSUAL TRAFFIC CASE TWO DRIVERS TO ONE CAR (Special to tie Herald.) CHRISTCHURCH, .this day. An unusual traffic case in which two people were driving one ear was heard before Mr. C. It. Orr-Walkcr, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court, yesterday, when Dorothy Bennington and Geo. Henry Farmer were charged with negligent driving on Dean’s avenue. Both pleaded not guilty. Senior-Sergeant O’Hara said the woman defendant was sitting at the wheel of the car and learning to drive, and tho young man was beside her and teaching her. The woman actually had the wheel of the ear until just before it ran into a cyclist, and the man then tried to get her out of the difficulty. Thus both were driving. In a statement she made to the police the woman said that when the ear approached two cyclists the other defendant told her to turn tho wheel, hut did not. say which way. She turned to the left and ran into the cyclist. The cyclist was not injured, but the cycle was damaged. * “What do you say about it, seniorsergeant?” asked the magistrate, '‘Who is liable?”

“I suppose the expert who took her into the street to teach her to drive is responsible,” said the senior-ser-geant. The magistrate held that the woman could not be convicted because slio Was being taught to drive and had an expert alongside her to prevent mishaps. She was really not driving, and the expert should have had sufficient control of the car to prevent such a mishap. He was guilty of a certain amount of negligenco, but had not been grossly negligent. He would be fined £1 and costs.

“What about my bicycle?” asked tho victim of the mishap. “That is a, matter for a civil action,” said the magistrate.