Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg Levy Attorneys and presenter on The Laws of Life on Cliffcentral.com writes:
My friend came out of a restaurant in Parkhurst the other day and found a note on his windscreen.
It read: “Hi, I’m sorry I bashed your bumper, I’m not leaving my number, I’m just pretending to leave it so that it looks like I’m being honest, besides you drive a car like this you can afford to fix it yourself. Have a nice day *smiley face*.”
We have all been there, either as the culprit or the victim. Whoever wrote this note probably thought that the worst that could happen is that someone saw them and they would have to pay for the repairs. He/she may have thought that the dent was so minor that they didn’t need to worry about it. The real truth of the matter is that a ‘ding and dash’ is a criminal offence no matter how small the damage is.
The law that covers this is the National Road Traffic Act which imposes a legal duty on anyone who is the driver of a vehicle that is involved in causing damage to another vehicle, to stop his/her vehicle, get out and inspect the damage to the vehicle. The law further imposes a duty on the driver to provide their personal details, even if there is no-one there to ask for them. This could be achieved by any means, even just leaving a phone number under the windscreen wipers.
The driver that simply leaves, if found out, can be charged with the above and they won’t be able to claim ignorance of the accident. The sentence would be a fine or imprisonment of up to three years, with the added consequence that they would get a criminal record.
That’s quite a price to pay for a little bumper basher – the question to be asked is whether you would commit other crimes such as shoplifting or assault, and if not, why one and not the other?
In an ideal world, it would be far better to just do the right thing and own up to the incident, deal with the consequences and maybe even make a new friend.
But who does the right thing?
