MOTORING OFFENCES

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1934, Page 5

MOTORING OFFENCES

CAR BACKS THROUGH WINDOW. SEQUEL IN POLICE COURT. A sequel to a recent spectacular car smash in Devon Street, . New Plymouth, when a motor vehicle parked outside the post office careered backwards across and down the street and smashed a plate glass window before it came to rest, followed in the Magistrate’s Court, New Plymouth, yesterday, before Mr. W. H. Woodward, S.M. Roderick John MacLeod, Palmerston North, was charged with leaving his motor-car on a grade in Devon Street and failing to place it in such a position that if set in motion while not under proper control it would run towards the kerb or other corresponding obstruction at the rear. MacLeod had parked his car beside the post office, said Senior-Sergeant E. T. C. Turner, and walked round to the letterboxes. When he returned he found the car careering backwards across Devon Street. It had been suggested that another car in front of it had backed into it and set it in motion, but the sergeant held that that was not likely, and that MacLeod had neglected to apply the hand-brake hard enough. MacLeod was fined £l, with costs 10s. James Corkill, Auckland, appeared on a charge of allowing a person to stand on the running-board of his van while it was in motion. When the van turned a comer, explained Senior-Sergeant Turner, the door flew open, and the boy, who had been holding on to it, fell on the road. He suffered a bruised knee and elbow, but needed no medical attention. It was not a serious offence, he said, but the action had been brought as a warning to the public. This was the only charge he had ever had preferred against him as a motor driver, said Corkill, and it was not his fault The boy jumped on the van uninvited • after the van had started, and had travelled only 44 yards. The magistrate dismissed the case as trivial, subject to Corkill paying the court costs of 10s.