The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 1920. AN INTOLERABLE MENACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 August 1920, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 1920. AN INTOLERABLE MENACE.

The case dealt with at the Eltham Magistrate's Court last week, when a commercial traveller was fined. £5 and costs for 'being drunk while in charge of a motor car, calls attention to the urgent need that exists for drastic punishment being meted out for such offences. The number of motor vehicles now in use is so large, and the danger to motorists and the public so great from acts of carelessness or criminal incapacity on the part of some drivers, that the time has arrived when the law should not only impose such penalties as will put an end to a menace that is becoming a terror to all who use the public highways, but magistrates and justices should show no mercy to these delinquents. For anyone to be drunk while acting as driver of a motor vehicle of any kind should be regarded as a crime punishable by imprisonment without the option of a fine, for the danger to life and limb, apart from damage to property, i 3 greatly intensified. Drunkenness at any time is inexcusable, but a drunken motorist is a man at war against society, with a death-dealing weapon capable of infinite destruction, the marvel being that more casualties do not occur. In no case of this kind should any leniency be shown. If the law does not at present provide for punishment that will fit this inhuman crime, it should be speedily amended so as to fix a minimum term of imprisonment that will suffice to act as a deterrent as well as a punitive sentence. Under no circumstances should an of-

fender of this kiml get off with a fine, for the offence is far too serious. Moreover, a conviction should preclude the offender from holding a license to drive, and lie should be liable to pay double tlie amount of any damage caused. There have been eases in which motor drivers have been fined more than once for being drunk while in charge of cars, and still allowed to run riot. Such leniency is deplorable, and is a blot on the country. The matter is one that admits of no half-hearted measures, and a month or more spent in gaol would be a wholesome corrective. Until our public thoroughfares are freed from this menace the authorities will be to blame, for imposing small fines is a mockery of justice when the lives of the public are at stake.