The Times yesterday carried an editorial titled Road Users Deserve To Be Better Protected. It was carried at the beginning of the week to highlight a worrying reality: the traffic accidents, at times very serious if not fatal, occurring over the weekend. The publication could not have been more timely, coinciding as it did with the decision handed down by the court of appeal on a hit-and-run accident that happened in Attard last year and which almost cost the lives of two young girls.

Magistrate Doreen Clarke had jailed Maximilian Ciantar, 21, of Marsa for two years in connection with the accident. He was also banned from driving for 10 years and the magistrate, rightly, ordered that the ban starts running once he served time. One is unlikely to be able to drive if one is behind bars and if the order had not been given the magistrate might as well have frozen Mr Ciantar’s driving licence for eight years. It must also be pointed out that Magistrate Clarke had noted that Mr Ciantar had already been convicted eight times for different crimes, including driving without a licence and without insurance cover on three occasions.

He had also been driving without a licence and without insurance when he mowed down the two girls at a speed of over 100 kilometres an hour.

Mr Justice Lawrence Quintano, sitting in the court of appeal, agreed with most of what Magistrate Clarke said but disputed her conclusion with regard to the suspension of the driving licence. Not only did he decide to reduce the suspension of the driving licence from 10 years to six months but he also ordered that the ban should start running forthwith. So, effectively, Mr Ciantar can start driving the moment he walks out of prison.

The judge explained that he based his decision about the suspension of the licence on the fact that when, in the past, he had been found guilty of driving without a licence and without insurance, Mr Ciantar had not been charged with negligent and dangerous driving. The latest accident did amount “to reckless, negligent or dangerous driving”, Mr Justice Quintano noted.

The law lays down that, where reckless or dangerous driving results, the court can suspend the licence for not less than three months in the case of a first conviction and for not less than a year if there is a second or more convictions. Is the law setting a minimum but not a maximum! And if the judge argued that three months were the minimum and a year the maximum, why did he not go for the latter?

Here was a person caught driving without a licence and without insurance cover on a number of occasions, speeding at over 100 kilometres an hour in a residential area and failing to stop even after running over two girls on a zebra crossing.

The Times concluded its leader yesterday saying that “society demands that the transport authorities and/or the courts deal with irresponsible elements sternly”.

This latest judgement needs to be analysed by the powers that be to see whether the punishment stipulated by law is adequate to fit the crime. If not, then no time should be lost in making the necessary changes, laying more stress on long periods of driving licence suspension and community work.

It cannot be said that the courts have been lenient with Mr Ciantar. However, the driving suspension decision by the court of appeal does send the wrong signal and society cannot afford that.