Death Penalty For Dangerous Drivers

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 91, 6 September 1948, Page 5

Death Penalty For Dangerous Drivers

Some countries allow their judges and magistrates an amazing latitude in Selecting the punishments for motoring offences. In 19316 in Yunnanfu, a Chinese city about the size'of Coventry, England, four local motorists were sentenced to death for dangerous driving. Their surprise at the sentence was increased by the fact that hitherto any pedestrian knocked over by a car had been fined for “obstruction”! Courts in the U.&.S.R. and Yuogaslavia have also inflicted the death penalty for dangerous driving, but only when it has resulted in a fatal accident. Even in South Africa, courts may award solitary cortfinement on spare diet for motoring offences punishable by imprisonment, and during 1938 a motorist convicted at Bellville, in the Cape, of driving “under the influence” was amazed to hear himself sentenced to five cuts with a light cane. In California, motorists convicted of reckless driving, failing to stop after an accident, or of drunken driving, were sentenced in Santa Ana to have red stripes painted on their cars. The object of these stripes, each four inches wide, was to identify drivers to the police if they parked near any place where liquor was sold.