Under - 21s and Articulated Outfits : No Firm Ruling
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rrHREE judges were unable to decide,
last week, whether a person under the age of 21 was entitled to drive an articulated lorry. Their ruling had been anxiously awaited in the transport world, following convictions at Lancaster against a 17-year-old driver and his employer (The Commercial Motor, June 7).
The convictions were quashed by the Queen's Bench Divisional Court, but on the ground that the charges had been improperly laid_ Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice, said he could not indicate what the decision would have been, if the charges had been correctly worded.
The appeals were lodged by Claude Wills, aged 17, and his father, Richard Wills, a Carlisle haulier. The youth had been fined for driving an articulated lorry while under age, and for driving the vehicle without insurance, and his father had been found guilty of permitting the offences.
Units Treated Together
Mr. Michael Hoare, for father and son, said a person under 21 could legally drive a motorcar weighing less than 3 tons, and could continue to drive it with a trailer attached. An articulated lorry was, in effect, a vehicle and trailei-, and the two units had to be treated separately. However, the Lancaster justices had decided that, as the combination weighed more than 3 tons, it should be treated as a heavy motorcar.
The vehicle was comprehensively insured, and both Claude Wills and his father were under the impression that the youth was entitled to drive it. Mr. Hoare went on to point out that there was no such offence as driving an articulated lorry while under 21, yet this was what the youth had been accused of. In fact, he was not charged with the offence of which he was found guilty.
For the police, Mr. G. Bean said he did not seek to uphold the conviction. Even if the youth had been charged correctly with driving a heavy motorcar while under age, the regulations had got into such a state that he would not have been guilty.
The law was designed to prevent people under 21 from driving heavy vehicles, but in the present state of affairs a boy under 21 could drive a vehicle carrying a 10-ton load. This was because a tractor such as the youth was driving was classed as a motorcar under the Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations.
"Tell the Minister"
Mr. Bean said he hoped the court would draw the attention of the Minister of Transport to the impossible state of the regulations.
Lord Goddard replied that it would be more proper for Lancashire County Police to approach the Minister. In this case, there was difficulty because the Road Traffic Act, 1930, did not define an articulated lorry. The convictions bad to be quashed because the charge did not lay an offence under the Act.
The charge had not been properly laid. If it had, the court could have decided whether the youth was entitled to drive a heavy motorcar—if, in fact, an articulated lorry was a heavy motorcar.
He added: "I have never been able to understand how any human being can carry in his mind the regulations issued under this Act."
Mr. Justice Devlin and Mr. Justice Pearson agreed with the findings, and costs were awarded against the police. •