daniel chigunwe
hit-and-run drivers
A RISING road crime is the hit-and-run accident where a driver hits a pedestrian and either kills or injures them, but just drives off without giving assistance or reporting the accident.
At present the police are seeking the drivers of 15 vehicles that were involved in hit-and-run accidents, one even striking a police officer directing traffic and then speeding off. But there are other past accidents where the driver was never found and there are thus people driving around our roads who killed someone, and were never caught.
When these drivers are caught and brought to trial, quite often the fact that they did not stop and render assistance is treated far more severely than the injuring or killing of a pedestrian. In many cases, there is blame on both sides when a car hits a pedestrian and magistrates take this into account, along with the driving conditions and the speed the car was moving at.
You can get speeding drunk drivers veering off the road and ploughing into pedestrians on the verge, and they are obviously looking at a serious prison sentence, which will be extended if they did not stop and had to be hunted down later.
But you also get pedestrians who suddenly leap out into the road almost in front of a driver proceeding soberly and carefully but who simply has no time or space to stop. That driver might well be cleared of the accident in the subsequent court case, but still go to jail if they failed to stop and render assistance.
Most accidents involving a vehicle and a pedestrian fall between these extremes, but generally the punishment for not stopping after the accident is higher than the punishment for the initial accident, even if that did lead to the death of a pedestrian. There has to be a high element of recklessness or drunkenness or other aggravating factor to see the driver imprisoned for the accident, while the failure to stop is almost always a prison sentence.
Hunting these hit-and-run drivers is difficult. While a vehicle suffers minor damage in the accident, dents and abrasions perhaps, many vehicles on Zimbabwean roads have similar damage so the accident damage does not stand out.
While respectable panel beaters usually want to know how the damage occurred, and will tell the police if they think there is something suspicious, a lot more panel beating is now done informally and regrettably the police do not always have reasonable contacts with these panel beaters and backyard mechanics. But there are still panel beaters who will inform the police if they see something odd about the job they are doing.
In past decades a fair number of hit-and-run drivers were turned in by one of the very few panel beaters then in the country, after they recognised that the accident damage they were supposed to fix could not have been hitting a fence pole or another car or caused by the excuse given by the driver.
These days those who do run down and hit a pedestrian might well feel they have a reasonable chance of getting away with this. This is one reason why the police are so keen on talking to possible witnesses, or getting tip-offs from family and friends of the driver.
Once they have identified the car, forensic examination of the paint and any threads or other debris on the car at the point of collision, combined with any flakes at the accident site, can usually provide enough evidence to convict. The problem is finding that car.
We have other hit-and-run accidents, but fortunately without death and injury. There are people who scrape a car in a car park, or bump into another vehicle and then speed off. Often someone will see the number plate and record the number, but sometimes again the offending driver will get away with it, especially if they are missing number plates and have a common sort of car.
There have been drivers in court cases who have said they were frightened to stop, frightened of either a growing crowd assembling or frightened that they were being set up in some sort of trap by a gang of robbers at night.
Magistrates have made it clear that they will only consider such evidence if the driver can show that within a couple of minutes, they managed to phone the police or emergency services, detailing where the accident took place, and then co-operated fully with the authorities and followed instructions.
But someone trying to claim a few days later when tracked down that they were frightened has not much a leg to stand on. They failed totally in their duty and so have to face the music without an excuse. They left someone hurt lying in the street, or someone dying on the side of the road or the middle of the road. They neither offered help, not sought help from someone else.
The reason we are all obliged to stop at an accident is to render what assistance we can. The most important point is to try and save lives and ensure whoever is hurt is treated as quickly as possible. Sometimes the driver hitting a pedestrian is the person who can get an injured pedestrian to hospital the quickest and so must do that.
Even when the police are called and arrive promptly, their first action will be making sure the injured are looked after and are taken to hospital if they require treatment.
Only when the lifesaving part is over, do the police start recording statements and crafting the accident report, working out who was a fault and how. The investigation of an accident can wait when necessary so that all available resources are mobilised to save lives.
Drivers, even if they are at fault, need to be involved in this, and practically the fact that they do stop and render all the assistance they can will influence a magistrate passing sentence in their favour, just as a refusal to stop will influence the magistrate far more severely.
daglous masveta
