PRISON FOR DRUNKEN MOTORISTS

Wanganui Chronicle, 10 November 1950, Page 4

PRISON FOR DRUNKEN MOTORISTS

' j drunken driver is a killer” was the succinct averment of the Director of Transport, Mr. Laure'nsoli. There is small need for amplification of this statement by New Zealand’s leading authority on the Dominion’s transport problem. Confirmation, previously ample enough, however, is again provided by the remarks of Mr. Justice Northcroft speaking at the curivnt Greymouth sessions of the Supreme Court. His Honour said the Court was . being asked to deal with the third ease in two consecutive sessions in which a death had occurred in a motor accident following drinking.

. In Dunedin the two magistrates decided several years ago that drivers who are convicted by them on counts of being intoxicated in charge of motor vehicles will at all times be sent to prison unless there are special circumstances. On the same day that Mr. Justice Northcroft was making his observations in Greymouth Mr. J. D. Willis, Stipendiary Magistrate at Dunedin, was stating that the prison-on-convie'tion attitude of the Dunedin bench had had the effect of reducing the incidence of eases of intoxicated drivers. T he mora l ’s plain.- where intoxicated drivers are tolerated life is more unsafe on the streets and mads but where prison is the penalty for such remissness on the part of drivers life becomes safer both for road users and for car occupants as well. It is to be hoped that the Dunedin precedent will be followed in other parts of the Dominion. That it is as yet not of universal application is revealed by the comment of counsel engaged in the Dunedin case that “an accused in another centre had been granted probation after, four or five previous convictions for similar offences.” Is it not time that some attention was given to thosi magistrates who are so lenient with the drunken driver as indicated by the statement of counsel in the Dunedin court?