Taking and Driving Away with Consent
| Published date | 01 January 1951 |
| Date | 01 January 1951 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201835101500108 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Taking
and Driving
Away
with
Consent.
THE offence created by section 28 of
the
Road Traffic
Act 1930 of taking
and
driving away amotor vehicle
without
the
consent of
the
owner or other lawful authority,
is a recent example of
that
process
by
which
the
criminal
law has to
adapt
itself to modern conditions.
It
aims
at
a
mischief which either did
not
exist in
the
days before
motor-cars became common on
the
roads, or if it did exist,
it was
not
considered serious enough to engage
the
attention
of
the
criminal law. There is no
doubt
that
the
creation
of this crime has been well justified
by
the
frequent use to
which section 28 is applied in circumstances which would
not
sustain acharge of larceny.
Nevertheless, when viewed in
the
light of
the
common
law,
it
will be seen
that,
in this section,
the
legislature
have
turned
into a crime
that
which is nothing more or less
than
the
tort
of trespass.
It
cannot be denied
that
certain
classes of trespass have been
statutory
crimes for
many
years,
e.g
atrespass on railway property,
and
thereby an
efficient
and
summary remedy has been provided for an
evil which was frequently fraught
with
great
danger to
the
perpetrator. However,
the
law was careful
to
measure its
disapproval of this
petty
offence
with
an equally
petty
punishment,
the
maximum in
the
case of railway trespass
being a fine of
£5.·
But
when one
turns
to section 28 one is faced with
an
offence which
the
law considers so serious
that
the
per-
petrator
may
be imprisoned on summary conviction for
three months, or, being convicted on indictment,
may
be
imprisoned for twelve months,
and
may
suffer in each case
asubstantial fine.
Courts
must
therefore be ever diligent in seeing
that
defendants are
not
wrongly convicted when charged under
section 28
and
must
not
assume in every
case-
that
the
•
Railway
Regulation
Act,
184Q-Sec.
16.
\18
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