TRAFFIC OFFICER ON DUTY?

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1930, Page 14

TRAFFIC OFFICER ON DUTY?

LEGAL POINT IN COLLISION CASE. CHARGES BY POLICE DISMISSED. Two men were charged. at the ■ New Plymouth Police. Court yesterday with breaches of the motor regulations when their cars collided at the corner of Hobson and Devon Streets on May 6. The magistrate dismissed both informations. The charge against one driver , of not giving way to traffic on his right was dismissed because the police failed to prove in their case that the intersection at which the collision occurred was an intersection not controlled by a constable or a traffic officer. If there was. a traffic officer on duty at that, intersection, then the regulation under which the information had been laid did not apply. Nothing had been brought forward to prove that there was not. a traffic officer ’on duty, said counsel. One driver, Samuel Richards,, who

was driving a service car along Devon . Street ' to -Fitzr.oy, was charged with approaching .an . Intersection at a. speed . greater than 15 miles an hour.- The other driver, John O’Neill, who was driving a milk van out of Hobson Street into Devon Street,.was. charged with not giving a way I to. traffic, on the right. . . ' The case . was a three-cornered one. The prosecution was conducted by the police, Mr. A. A.' Bennett, appeared for, Richards and Mr. L. M. Moss for O’Neill.. He had been sitting, in the second seat of Gibson’s bus,, driven by Richards, said. Leslie B. Webster, and he had been struck at the time ,at the careful, pace with which Richards was driving. At no time up to the. scene of the accident was he going above : 15 to 20 miles an hour. The van came., out of Hobson Street, slackened momentarily arid continued on. its course. Richards veered to his right but the van continued ori x its way. The bus struck the van a glancing blow. The steering gear seemed .to have been affected as the bus did> not come back to the road. Richards put on his brakes and the bus struck a telegraph pole. By his presence of. mind, witness considered, Richards had averted,a probable fatality. Another passenger, : Alex. Lusk, corroborated this evidence. L. Higginson, . who was travelling with O’Neill, said they came up to ■•Devon Street at from 10 to 12 miles an hour. When the service bus was seen the brakes were applied, and the milk float was turned to the left by the force of the impact. He estimated the speed of . the service car at from 30 to 35 miles. If the brakes on the bus had been applied there need have been no collision. Constable King visited the acene of the accident and made a plan of the locality. He described marks he saw on the roadway. He .wondered why the bus had finished up in the position it reached, but in answer to Mr. Bennett said he was not aware .that the steering gear of the vehicle had been affect-ed-by the collision. ',. ,

' Mr. Bennett submitted there was no satisfactory evidence of speed in the case at all. He urged that the case should be, dismissed but the magistrate said he would like to hear the evidence of .Richards. . About 15 feet away- from the intersection, said Samuel Richards, the driver of the bus, he saw the milk van between the gutter and trie fence line. He had blown his horn and looked to the right at the intersection. He had been going at about. 15 miles per hour, .taking particular care because he had Mr. Gibson’s wife and daughter in ■ the' car. After the impact his wheels had locked and he had been, unable to, swing, the car round to. the road. He put his brakes on hard and the bus had hit the electric, light pole. He had increased his speed in veering to the right to avoid the impact. The driver of the milk van, O’Neill, had a very limited vision, said Mr. L. M. Moss. He looked to the right and saw no traffic in his arc of vision. When the bus driven by Richards came into view he did pull up and it was only 'the speed of the bus that prevented him from pulling up on the sea side of the tram line. The bus, which the driver said was doing only 15 ihiles per hour, had careered 70 feet across the road after the collision and struck a telegraph. pole, making the driver unconscious.

O’Neill, the driver of the milk van, said that the bus appeared to be going at 25 miles per hour. A boy in hio van had jumped out on to the footpath before the collision. O’Neill had pulled up with his, front wheels on the tram line nearest the sea side. He was comin »■ out of the intersection at 10 or 12 miles per hour. From the time he saw the bus till he stopped he travelled about 12 feet. It was a bright morning and' the sun would be shining in Richards' eyes. He had felt like saying some very hard things about the evidence of the speed of Richards’ car, said Mr. Moss, but had made up his mind not to do so. It did not seem fair to him, however, that one man should be convicted and the charge against the other dismissed. Consequently, he had to refer to the point that the police had. not brought any evidence to "show that there was not a traffic officer or constable on duty at the intersection.