CAR CONVERSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1933, Page 13

CAR CONVERSIONS

PENALTIES TOO LIGHT

''BREEDING YOUNG !

CRIMINALS"

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

DUNEDIN, This Day

"If tho Government won't wake up and do tho right thing about car conversions the motorists will have to take the law into their own hands, eveu if they arc imprisoned for it," said Mr. 1\ W. Johnston, president of tho South Island Motor Union, at the annual meeting of the Otago Motor Club. Personally, he said, he was prepared to do this and inflict his own punishment if tho need arose. He was now convinced that conversion or car stealing should be an indictable offence.

Another speaker said that the Government by its light penalties was breeding a race of young criminals. The president of the Otago Motor Club said that if the man who converted a car and deliberately threw a constable up against another car in Auckland recently was arrested; he should be charged with attempted murder.

Another speaker said, "Are you going to stand by and allow a constable to be crippled for life? I am. not going to stand that. My advice is to wait a reasonable time for the Government and the Courts to do the right thing, and then take the law in your own hands and suffer imprisonment as Mr. Stead, an English editor, did. I. am prepared to do that." Tho question of how much a man should drink when he was driving a car was the subject of comment by Mr. Johnston. "I am not one of those who say that a man should not have a single drink whon at the wheel," said Mr. Johnston. "It should be a man's own responsibility entirely. Everyone should know his capacity, and act accordingly."