The defendant appealed his conviction for driving with excess alcohol. He had driven his car within a camping site at Hayling Island. He might have been charged with driving on a road or other public place, but was charged with driving on a road. It was too late on appeal to widen the wording. The site contained some 350 plots, on 180 of which caravans were sited, with a tarmac perimeter road and what were described as ‘grass roadways’ between the caravan and tent pitch sites. The Justices were advised by their clerk: ”Road’ means any highway and any other road to which the public has access . . In determining whether a place is a ‘road’ for the purposes of the 1988 Act, the question to be asked, if the place is not a highway, is whether it is a road to which the general public have actual and legal access. A road has the physical character of a defined or definable route or way, with ascertained or ascertainable edges, leading from one point to another with the function of serving as a means of access enabling travellers to move conveniently from one point to another along a definable route.’ The Justices convicted on the basis that the place where he was driving was one to which the public had access.
Held: The appeal succeeded. The Justices had concentrated on that question without first considering the logically anterior question whether this was a road at all. mcCombie J said: ‘Looking at the evidence which the justices recite in their case, the only material that we find is that the collision, to which admittedly Mr Dunmill was a party, occurred on a grass area, and there was the evidence of Mr MacCullum who had seen skid marks, not necessarily near the collision site, but apparently near the tent where the appellant had been staying, which strayed onto a roadway. It does not seem to me, therefore, that that slender evidence was sufficient to take the site in this case out of what one might generically have thought a caravan site to be, namely not ‘a road’ as such. Moreover, it seems to me that those two features of evidence were not sufficient in any event to establish this as being a road within the meaning of the charge.’
Judges:
McCombe J
Citations:
[2004] EWHC 1700 (Admin)
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Barrett v Director of Public Prosecutions Admn 10-Feb-2009
The defendant appealed against his conviction for driving whilst disqualified. He had driven on a roadway within a caravan park. A public footpath (a highway) went through the park. There were gates at the entrance but these were kept open. The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Road Traffic
Updated: 26 November 2022; Ref: scu.327989
