Criminal Law and Procedure — Careless driving — Whether defendant drove with lack of care at roundabout


(ON APPEAL FROM TWS NO. 3158 OF 2009)

Mr Hayson Tse, Senior Public Prosecutor of the Department of Justice, for the Respondent

Appellant, Yiu Wing-hung, in person

Line J


[1] This is an appeal against conviction for careless driving.

[2] The Appellant was driving a van, and came to a roundabout that had three lanes. He approached it and went into it on the middle lane. There was a car to his left-hand side. It was a police car. The driver of the police car says that the Appellant, once on the roundabout, cut across him and took the first exit, causing him to brake to a halt in order to avoid an accident.

[3] No one has ever argued that if that occurred, it was not careless driving.

[4] The Appellant told the magistrate, and he tells me, that what occurred was that he indeed did cross from the middle lane to take the first exit, but when he did so, there was a sufficient gap between his vehicle and the police car on his left to make it a safe manoeuvre, and he presents the appeal to me, saying, "Why believe the policeman? It’s just word against word."

[5] The fact is that if the policeman braked his car to a halt, that was something about which he could not be mistaken. If all that had happened was a vehicle crossed into his lane and crossed his path in a way that was safe, why would he have braked to a halt? It seems to me that it must follow that if the Appellant is right, the policeman has not told the truth, and he must have known it.

[6] I do not give the policeman any special status. People do tell lies in court, but normally, they do so for a good reason, or a reason that one can understand. But why would the policeman say he braked to a halt when he had not, and why would he then chase after a vehicle that had done nothing to him, and stop and summons the driver?

[7] When I look at the Appellant’s evidence, it is amenable to mistake. The whole point of careless driving is that one has displayed a lack of care. It is not something done intentionally. Those who drive cars inevitably make errors of judgment, misjudging things like distance and speed. I am sure the Appellant thought that it was safe to undertake the manoeuvre he did, otherwise he would not have done it. But it only takes a relatively modest misjudgment for him to have done that which the police officer described.

[8] It is thus that I understand why it was that the magistrate convicted, and those same considerations drive me to dismiss this appeal.

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