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When is Speed Dangerous?

27th December 1946
Page 24
Page 24, 27th December 1946 — When is Speed Dangerous?
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Keywords : Law / Crime

/1AGISTRATES in "certain parts of al Cheshire who seem to hold rather strange views on the subject of dangerous driving," were strongly criticized by Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice, last week when dealing with decisions by the Bucklow (Cheshire) justices acquitting two lorry drivers of charges of driving to the danger of the public.

Commenting on the fact that other Che.-.'-.ire justices had previously dismissed similar charges against lorry drivers and had had the cases remitted with instructions from the King's Bench Divisional Court to convict, Lord

• Goddard said:— " One feels obliged to say that the magistrates appear to be acting in a somewhat contumacious manner. They have to remember that their courts are inferior courts to this court and under the jurisdiction of this court, and if magistrates persist in disregarding decisions of this court and do not follow them, they are guilty of a grave dereliction of duty and will find themselves in serious trouble."

The Lord Chief Justice was presiding over a specially constituted court of five judges in the King's Bench Divisional Court to consider two appeals by a Cheshire police superintendent, who had charged Thornton Oxley and Walter Edward Cobley with driving lorries on a Liverpool Manchester main road at a speed dangerous to the public. The magistrates found that although the vehicles were being driven at speeds exceeding 40 m.p.h., according to a police test over a stretch of the road, there was no danger to the public, and that there was nothing to distinguish the cases from the ordinary case of exceeding the speed limit.

According to the cases stated by the magistrates. Oxley, driving a 6-ton lorry, with an 8-ton load, covered a mile at a speed of 40-44 m.p.h. Cobley had driven a 4-ton articulated lorry, with a load of unspecified weight, for two miles at a speed of 40-48 m.p.h. The road carried a heavy volume of traffic and had a converging highway, two bends, five farmhouses and a narrow bridge.

"The magistrates say," said Lord Goddard, "it having been proved that the vehicles were being driven at an exceptionally high speed, that the vehicles were being driven in excess* of the legal speed limit, but in view of the type of road and the circumstances. they were not being driven at a speed dangerous to the public."

Oxley had overtaken another vehicle on a right-hand bend without giving a signal. Cobley slowed down to 30 m.p.h. when negotiating a bend.

The cases were referred back to the magistrates with a direction to convict.


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