The District Court, sitting as a magistrate under s 168 Criminal Procedure Act 1986 on a backup charge of negligent driving occasioning death after jury acquittal on dangerous driving, held that the Crown failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the intermediate fact that the deceased pedestrian was still in the process of crossing the road at the time of impact. The Court accepted the accused's consistent account that the deceased came from the direction of the median strip (his right-hand side), finding this was a reasonably available competing inference that precluded the Crown from establishing its case that the accused failed to keep a proper lookout. The Court also observed, obiter, that even if the deceased had been on the median strip, failure to notice her there would not constitute negligent failure to keep a proper lookout in the circumstances, and that nothing the accused could have done differently would have altered the outcome.
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