Welcome Addition to the Bookshelf
Page 69
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' RANSPORT managers—and others whose lot it is to brush occasionally th the law—will welcome the third Ltion of "Road Traffic Offences," by S. Wilkinson (The Solicitors' Law ktionery Society, Ltd., Oyez House, earns Buildings, Fetter Lane, London, 2.4, £2 net).
The publication of this new edition is 3articularly happy event at the present le, when we are confronted with yet other Road Traffic Act. A valuable Lture of the work is a table of comrisons as between the 1960 Act and the )0, 1934 and the 1956 versions, as well the Road and Rail Traffic Act of 1933.
• Wilkinson also gives us useful tables
relative cases, statutes and rules. ither, as is fashionable among riewers, can we complain that the lex is inadequate.
Mr. Wilkinson, who is clerk to the aces, Cambridge, treats a very wide complicated subject with the greatest erttion to detail—and with refreshing rity. His chapters on definitions and )eedure and evidence answer a large rnber of the questions of those due to appear in the courts for the first (and, with luck, the last) time, and the pages on notices of intended prosecution will settle the lurking hopes of those who might think there is a loophole in their summons.
Perhaps the real meat of the work is contained in two chapters on the offences with which road users can be charged. The author deals with these under 23 headings, from causing death to conduct on public service vehicles. In each subdivision the classic cases are quoted and the accused may draw what comfort he can from the fates that have befallen those before him.
In a country where it might be thought that the road user is as unpopular as the bank raider, a reference book of this kind is essential to transport men. It would be difficult to calculate with precision the number of offences that it is possible for the motorist to commit, even unwittingly. Yet it behoves us all to understand the law under which we live and work: Mr. Wilkinson's work goes far towards that unclerstandina.
T. W.