MAGISTRATE PROTESTS AGAINST TRIVIAL CHARGES

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17905, 22 July 1926, Page 9

MAGISTRATE PROTESTS AGAINST TRIVIAL CHARGES

MOTORISTS, HE SAYS, ARE INCONVENIENCED. (Special to the “ Star. ’’) LONDON, June 4. During the hearing of a number of summonses against motorists at the South-Western Court yesterday, Mr Ratcliffe Cousins, the Magistrate, said that if cautions were given where a slight infringement of the regulations had been made police officers could, as regards many of the cases, be employed in far more important duties than wasting their time in Court. In his opinion summonses should not be issued if the lettering and figures on the rear plate of a motor-car were sufficiently distinguishable to allow of their being read ten yards away. The head of the legal department of the Automobile Association yesterday said that they strongly supported the Magistrate’s remarks, and when the new Road Vehicles Bill was introduced into Parliament the association was going to press for a reduction in the number of technical offences which are at present the cause of many prosecutions. The departmental committee of the Ministry of Transport on the taxation and regulation of road vehicles, recommended : When instituting proceedings, the police should have regard to the object with which the regulation, the breach of which constitutes the offence, was made, and avoid regarding the mere breach of the regulation as being necessarily an offence in itself. Searching For Cases. Motorists feel that this recommendation is largely ignored by police officers, for a large number of the summonses issued are for purely technical offences. Failure to produce the driving license immediately on demand frequently re- ' suits in a quite unnecessary summons as the license is often left at home ac- | cidentally through the changing of j clothes. The temporary absence of a rear light through a slight defect in the lighting arrangements is a trivial offence frequently seized upon for a prosecution. Even if the summonses for these petty offences are dismissed, motorists are put to the inconvenience of attending Court apart from the waste of time.