swarb.co.uk - law index
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Road Traffic - From: 1991 To: 1991
This page lists 3 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.
Director of Public Prosecutions v Hill [1991] RTR 35
1991
Neill LJ
Road Traffic
The prosecutor appealed against dismissal of a summons alleging that the driver had driven with excess alcohol. The magistrates had concluded that the intoximeter must have been faulty. Held: The conclusion that the device was unreliable was based on evidence which did not justify it.
Neill LJ said: "In this case it seems to us that if the defendant were to be believed, however credible a witness he appeared to be and however well he gave his evidence, it would involve three very surprising consequences: (1) that the intoximeter itself was faulty; (2) that not only was that faulty but the Drager Alert Device was also faulty, and finally that there was some explanation other than drink to account for the evidence of glazed vision which was not only given by the police, but was accepted by the Justices."
1 Citers
Director of Public Prosecutins v Vivier [1991] 4 All ER 18
1991
Simon Brown J
Road Traffic
There had been a traffic accident in a large privately owned caravan park. Held: Premises will be private where they are entered for reasons beneficial to the occupier. Referring to Harrison v Hill: "What Lord Sands, and indeed Lord Clyde, say in Harrison v Hill can really be summarised thus. A road is one to which the public have access if (a) it is in fact used by members of the public and (b) such use is expressly or implicitly allowed -- or, putting it the other way round, not achieved by overcoming physical obstruction or defying express or implied prohibition.
Factor (b) presents no problem. But factor (a) does. In particular, as it seems to us, (a) essentially begs rather than answers the other crucial question whether those who use the road are members of the public. Take our case. We have not the least hesitation in accepting that the only material use of this caravan park was by those who had complied with the various site requirements and been properly admitted, in short those who had been expressly or implicitly allowed into the caravan park, either as caravaners or campers or as their bona fide guests. We think it right to ignore both the few trespassers who escaped the security controls and also the users of the bridleway (which in any event could not affect the character of the park as a whole). And, indeed we do not understand Mr Glen for the prosecutor to contend otherwise.
What that leaves outstanding, however, is the critical question: are the caravaners, campers and guests to be regarded, within the park, still as members of the general public, or are they instead, as the justices found, at that stage a special class of members of the public?
Upon that question, Harrison v Hill helps but little: there is simply Lord Clyde's reference to 'the special class of members of the public who have occasion for business or social purposes' to use the farm road." and
"How then, in some particular road or place is used by an identifiable category of people, should justices decide whether that category is 'special' or 'restricted' or 'particular' such as to distinguish it from the public at large? What, in short, is the touchstone by which to recognise a special class of people from members of the general public?
Some light is thrown upon the problem by the passage already cited from Lord MacDermott CJ's judgment in Montgomery v Loney [1959] NI 171 at 177: one asks whether there is about those who obtain permission to enter 'some reason personal to them for their admittance'. If people come to a private house as guests, postmen or meter readers, they come for reasons personal to themselves, to serve the purposes of the occupier.
But what of the rather different type of case such as the present where those seeking entry are doing so for their own (rather than the occupier's) purposes and yet are screened in the sense of having to satisfy certain conditions for admission. Does the screening process operate to endow those passing through with some special characteristic whereby they lose their identity as members of the general public and become instead a special class?
Our approach would be as follows. By the same token as one asks in the earlier type of case whether permission is being granted for a reason personal to the user, in these screening cases one must ask: do those admitted pass through the screening process for a reason, or on account of characteristic personal to themselves? Or are they in truth merely members of the public who are being admitted as such and processed simply so as to make them subject to payment and whatever other conditions the landowner chooses to impose?
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Director of Public Prosecutions v O'Connor and Chapman and Others [1992] RTR 66
1991
Woolf LJ, Leonard J
Road Traffic
The court looked at the elements needed to be established to support a defence to a charge of driving with excess alcohol on the basis that the defendant's drinks had been spiked: 'On the authorities, it is now clearly established that the matters which the defendant has to establish on the balance of probabilities in order to show special reasons are three-fold. By admissible and relevant evidence, the driver is required to show, first of all, that his drink had been laced; secondly, that he did not know or suspect his drink had been laced; thirdly, if he had not taken a laced drink, the level of alcohol in his body would have not have exceeded the prescribed limit. If authority was needed to establish the requirement to prove those three matters through it is to be found in Pugsley v. Hunter." Expert evidence will often be required to demonstrate those two facts, and the expert evidence may well impinge upon the credibility of the driver's own evidence.
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