Judge’s comments about fatal crash driver’s speed under scrutiny

A judge’s sentencing comments about a drunk driver who killed a passenger in a high speed crash are disappointing, unhelpful and contradict road safety messages, campaigners say.

On the night of his 21st birthday party in October 2022, Clark Thomas Stewart got behind the wheel of a car overloaded with five of his close friends. Three of the men weren’t wearing seatbelts. One was in the boot.

Several minutes later, Stewart lost control and crashed into a tree on the fringe of a rural mid-Canterbury road, killing a 23-year-old man, and badly injuring the other passengers, including two who were thrown from the vehicle.

Police found Stewart had been travelling at about 128kmh in a 100kmh area. Testing of a blood sample obtained several hours after the crash revealed his blood alcohol level was 94mg per 100ml of blood. The legal blood alcohol limit is 50mg.

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But when Stewart appeared for sentencing in the Ashburton District Court on Monday, aided by crutches and with a brace on his leg, Judge Campbell Savage didn’t make any broad statements denouncing the offending.

Instead, he said the 21-year-old was “only just” over the legal blood alcohol limit – incorrectly stating it was 80mg – and that his speed was not “greatly excessive”.

Caroline Perry, the director of road safety charity Brake, told Stuff she was disappointed by the judge’s comments.

“Comments like this are unhelpful when so much work goes into raising awareness of the risks involved in drink-driving and speeding. Even small amounts of alcohol impair your driving and your ability to react to hazards.

“Speed is an important factor in crashes, because whether or not it is the cause of a crash, the faster the speed, the more likely someone will be killed or seriously injured. In this case the driver was significantly exceeding both the speed limit and the drink drive limit.”

Students Against Dangerous Driving general manager Donna Govorko said the judge’s comments contradicted messages various agencies and road safety advocates were trying to convey to drivers.

“It’s not OK to even be slightly over the limit. Speed limits are there for a reason, they are there to factor in conditions of the environment. We’ve got this culture of ‘we’re only a little bit over the limit … she’ll be right’. We need to change that culture.”

New Zealand Automobile Association road safety spokesman Dylan Thomsen said many Kiwis would disagree with the judge’s comments.

“30kmh over the speed limit would be seen by a lot of people as an extremely high speed to be travelling at. Drinking to a point where you’re over the criminal limit … people need to drink a lot of alcohol to get to that point. People are going to be extremely intoxicated and impaired at that level and well beyond where driving should be, in anyone’s mind, seen as a good thing to do.”

Thomsen said rural roads, which are often narrow, have very little shoulder width and are bordered by trees and power poles rather than safety barriers, leave very little room for error.

“The risk of a catastrophic crash on those types of roads when you’re travelling at high speed is much greater.”

According to data published by the Ministry of Transport, a driver aged in their 20s with a blood alcohol level of 94 mg is nearly five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than a driver of the same age who’s at the legal limit of 50mg, and more than 30 times as likely to be involved in a fatal crash as someone of the same age with no alcohol in their system.

International research shows that a person driving at 130kmh is three times as likely to die in a crash than someone driving at 100kmh.

Judge Savage, a former Dunedin-based solicitor, was made a judge in December last year. He declined to comment when approached by Stuff on Tuesday.

During Monday’s hearing, Judge Savage said it was unusual for cases of drink-driving causing death not to result in a term of imprisonment, however it was not an “inflexible policy, or inevitable consequence”.

In sentencing Stewart to 11 months’ home detention, and disqualifying him from driving for two years, Judge Savage said he’d given significant discounts for Stewart first appearance guilty pleas, previously unblemished record, age, good character and “extreme” remorse.

The victims’ families did not want Stewart to be jailed.

Driving with excess blood alcohol causing death carries a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $20,000.