DRUNKEN DRIVERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21180, 29 October 1938, Page 8

DRUNKEN DRIVERS

Potential Murderers May Spend Week-end* in Gaol Minister to Intensify Campaign By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON. October 28. If the Minister of Transport (Hon. R. Semple) can persuade Cabinet to agree to his idea, the war against drunken motorists is to be carried a step further. The Minister’s proposal is that drivers convicted of being drunk in charge of a car should work out their gaol sentence during week-ends only. The practice is one that is carried out in some States of America, and from information the Minister has received, it is proving an effective deterrent to the growing practice. In an interview to-day Mr Semple made it clear that he was determined to put the drunken driver off the road. ‘Drink and driving,” he said, “do not mix. and the man in charge of a high-powered car is a potential murderer.’’ Mr Semple said that he intended asking Cabinet to approve of weekend gaol punishment for convicted drivers. He pointed out that apart from the salutary effect it would have on the person convicted, the idea had other useful features. For instance, a wage-earner sentenced to a fortnight’s gaol for being found drunk in charge forfeited his wages for that fortnight, and his wife and family suffered as a consequence of his misdoing. “I do not want the wife and family to be penalised through the man’s action,” said Mr Semple. “He alone should be made to suffer by working out that fortnight’s sentence over the weekend’s. He loses no wages during the week, and he is taught a lesson. In those parts of America where this system has been tried it has created a psychological effect that has been helpful in curbing this practice.” “It is quite obvious." added the Minister, “that we will have to do something more than we are doing to stop this menace. We have been trying to persuade people to keep away from liquor when driving high-powered cars, and they will not do it. Instead of convictions going down, they have been going up, and we have to stop it.”