HAVE YOU A DRIVER’S LICENSE?

Wairarapa Daily Times, 11 March 1930, Page 5

HAVE YOU A DRIVER’S LICENSE?

(To the Editor). Sir, —Can you, or any of your readers, tell me why it is that a person not able to produce his or her motor driver’s license at the request of the traffic inspector gets a piece of blue paper and is fined for not being able to produce it? In another case: Two cars have an accident. The police arrive and take all particulars of the accident. One driver produces his license; the other driver can’t. When asked whore it is, they say they have left it at home. What I would like to know, Mr Editor, is thp policeman within his rights in telling them that it will be all Tight if they can show their license the next day, or can they be fined for driving without a license? —I am, etc., LICENSE-CARRIER. (On “License-Carrier’s” first question being referred to the Borough Traffic Inspector, he said that it had been tho practice, for tho last two or three years, to give a driver who failed to produce his license on request, a certain time to do so. A clause in Part 11. of the Motor Vehicles Act states: “That any person driving any motor vehicle shall produco his motor driver’s license for inspection whenever required to do so by a constable or by any person authorised in that behalf by a local authority. . . and if ho refuses or fails to do bo commits an- offence, and shall bo liable in respect of Bueh offence to a fine of five pounds.” The police, in the case cited by “License-Carrier,” act as stated, and rightly. If the licenso is not produced within the time limit set a prosecution naturally fol-. lows. When the Act eamc into force first, time was not given to produce the license, but the Courts rarely inflicted fines. A new interpretation was then given to the clause, and a certain time, according to the circumstances of the ease, given in which to produce the license, if the driver could not do so at once.—Ed., W.D.T.).