R v Gosney
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE MEGAW |
| Judgment Date | 05 July 1971 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1971] EWCA Crim J0705-6 |
| Docket Number | No. 597C/71 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 05 July 1971 |
Lord Justice Megaw
Mr. Justice Geoffrey Lane
Mr. Justice Kilner Brown
No. 597C/71
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. G. FLATHER appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. R. BUCKLEY appeared on behalf of the Crown.
At about midnight on the night of 28th March 1970 two police officers were driving along the east bound carriageway of the A2 road near Northfleet which at that point is a dual carriageway. No doubt to their consternation, the police officers saw a motor car approaching them, being driven at about 30 m.p.h. in the wrong direction on the fast lane of that carriageway on which they were themselves travelling. There was no question of excessive speed or of any other irregularity in the manner of driving, except for the startling fact that the car was going in the wrong direction on a one-way part of this important highway. The driver of the car was the appellant, Mrs. Doreen Rose Gosney.
On evidence of those simple facts the appellant was convicted at Kent County Sessions on 14th January 1971 of the offence of driving in a manner dangerous to the public contrary to s.2 of the Road Traffic Act 1960. She was given an absolute discharge. She appeals against conviction by leave of the single Judge.
If it had not been for the exclusion of evidence as the result of a ruling by the learned Deputy Chairman there could be no possible criticism of the conviction. That ruling gives rise to a question of law of general importance which has to be decided in this appeal.
At the outset of the trial it was known that the prosecution were minded to challenge the relevance, and therefore the admissibility, of evidence which the defence wished to offer. At the suggestion of the prosecution that issue was argued and decided at the outset. It is not necessary to consider whether that procedure was desirable. There is no dispute as to the general nature of the evidence which the appellant wished to offer. She desired to seek to prove, by her own testimony and by the production of plans and photographs, that it was through no fault of her own that she was driving on the wrong carriageway: she had turned right into the A2 at a road junction with which she was unfamiliar and at which, she wished to prove, there was no indication by road sign or otherwise that a right hand turn was prohibited; and there was nothing which would have indicated to a competent and careful driver, in the circumstances then and there prevailing, that she was about to drive, or was driving, her car on the wrong part of, and in the wrong direction on, a dual carriageway road.
The Deputy Chairman ruled that such evidence would be irrelevant and therefore it was inadmissible. He accepted the prosecution's submission, based essentially on passages in the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in R. v Ball and Loughlin (1966) 50 Cr.App.R 266, that the only question was, it was expressed by counsel for the prosecution, "the purely objective one", that is, assuming that it was proved that the appellant was driving on the wrong side of the road (the wrong carriageway of a dual carriageway), was that driving dangerous? If it was, said the prosecution, the reason why she came to be on the wrong side could not, in law, be a defence. This was not a case where it could be said that, because of a sudden onset of epilepsy or such like matters, she was not truly driving at all; nor was it a case where the manner of driving was caused by a sudden defect in the machinery or structure of the car which could not have been anticipated. Apart from those recognised special cases, once it was established that the manner of driving was dangerous, or produced a dangerous situation, it did not matter, said the prosecution, so far as criminal liability was concerned, if she could show that the dangerous manner of her driving (the fact that she was driving her car in the wrong direction in the wrong part of theroad) was without fault on her part.
The Deputy Chairman appears to have accepted that on that view of the law a driver would be guilty of dangerous driving even if the fact were that he had been positively directed, by a road sign which had been turned the wrong way round, to travel in the wrong direction It would mean (to use as an illustration the facts of an actual case in which some years ago one member of this Court was concerned as counsel, in the civil jurisdiction) that a driver would be guilty of dangerous driving where, as a result of an obstruction in the highway, he had been affirmatively directed by a police officer to travel on the wrong carriageway and there, without any lack of care on his part, collided with a car travelling in the opposite direction, the police having omitted to stop or warn traffic coming from that direction.
It may well be thought that, if that is indeed the law, while it may lead towares certainty, it offends the sense of justice. The Deputy Chairman dealt with that aspect by saying: "the practical answer is that...
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