Read the full judgment text of CACC 000703/1967 on BabelCite. This Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 29 January 1968 before W.A. Blair-Kerr.
Criminal law – careless driving causing death – Road Traffic Ordinance, Cap.220 s.14(1) – sentence of fine and imprisonment – disqualification from holding a driving licence – Road Traffic Ordinance s.23(1) and s.23(10) – Magistrates Ordinance, Cap.227 s.27 – appellate intervention in sentence – speed inferred from skid mark and police road test – whether death is relevant to sentence – R. v. Nuneaton Justices, ex parte Parker (1954) 3 A.E.R. 251 – R. v. Kan Chik Tung (1963) H.K.L.R. 721 – Adair v. Munn (1940) S.C.J. 69 – Chiang Shu-cheong and the Queen (1962) H.K.L.R. 595 – Hughes and Jeavons v. the Crown (1949) 33 H.K.L.R. 318 – R. v. Yip Yuk Lum (1961) H.K.L.R. 278. At about 2.30 p.m. on 4 September 1967 the appellant, a private car driver with four prior driving convictions including a 1951 dangerous driving conviction, struck and killed an elderly woman on a stud crossing on Leighton Road, a 30 m.p.h. one-way street; the car left a 60-foot skid mark and a police road test with the same car at the same spot produced a 60-foot skid mark from 55 m.p.h. The appellant was charged only with careless driving, to which he pleaded guilty and admitted the statement of facts; the magistrate fined him $1,000, sentenced him to three months' imprisonment and disqualified him for five years, and on 2 December 1967 refused an application for review supported by character evidence. On appeal to the Full Court (Blair-Kerr J.A.) the appellant challenged the speed inference, the imposition of imprisonment alongside the maximum fine, the relevance of the resulting death and the period of disqualification. Held, dismissing the appeal: (1) in the absence of any challenge or contrary evidence, the magistrate was entitled to assume for sentencing purposes that the appellant was driving at about 55 m.p.h., since a police road test with the same car at the same spot correlating skid-mark length to initial speed was relevant and cogent evidence, and the Highway Code figures relied on by the appellant were mere minimum general figures with no statutory authority; (2) the magistrate did not err in principle in imposing the maximum fine of $1,000 and three months' imprisonment under s.14(1) of the Road Traffic Ordinance, Cap.220, since it was not for the court to disregard the statutory ceiling prescribed by the legislature and this was a very bad case of bad driving; (3) although death is not an element of the offence of careless driving, the fact of death was relevant to sentence because it illuminated the potential danger the offence was designed to prevent; and (4) the five-year disqualification was not excessive, as the court could look at the appellant's driving record as a whole, the primary purpose of disqualification was public safety rather than the offender's personal hardship, and the maximum sentence and disqualification were warranted by the appellant's cumulative record culminating in a fatality. Sentence and disqualification upheld.
Legal issues: Reliability of speed inference from skid-mark road test · Propriety of combining imprisonment and maximum fine for careless driving · Relevance of the resulting death in sentencing for careless driving · Validity and length of five-year disqualification order
Outcome: Appeal against sentence and against the disqualification order dismissed; the fine of $1,000, three months' imprisonment and five years' disqualification were upheld.
Cited by 1 case