Pretoria - A motorcyclist convicted of malicious damage to property following an alleged road rage incident during which he allegedly broke the window of a motorist, was vindicated when the High Court in Pretoria found he was not at fault.
Frans Stone was convicted in the lower court and sentenced to a fine of R2 000 or two months’ imprisonment. He turned to the High Court in Pretoria to appeal against his conviction and sentence.
The motorist, who was not named in the judgment delivered on Monday by Judge Neil Tuchten, was on October 21, 2011, travelling along the N4 highway, when she noticed that the highway was congested. She took the Rossouw Street off-ramp to avoid the traffic.
She swerved on to the offramp in what was said to be a risky manoeuvre and parked on the yellow chevrons in the offramp because there were vehicles ahead of her.
Motorcyclist Stone left the N4 at the same time, using the same off-ramp. He said the swerve by the motorist placed his life in danger and she nearly collided with him.
Angry and shouting, he confronted the woman in her parked car.
The woman said she opened her window slightly to hear what he was saying. She told Stone that she was sorry and that she had not seen him.
According to her, he grabbed her window and tried to pull the glass down. It shattered and pieces of glass fell into her car.
Stone testified that he was wearing his riding gloves when he confronted her. He said he rested his gloved hands on the glass of the partially opened window when he spoke to the motorist.
According to Stone, she laughed at him while he was shouting at her and she said something to him in a language he did not understand.
He testified that she then activated the mechanism used to close the window.
Stone tried to withdraw his gloved hands from the closing window, but as he did so, the friction of the gloves on the window caused it to shatter.
He said: “I surmise that the rubbers got gripped on to the glass of the window and that is why it pulled back when my hands pulled back.”
Stone explained that some vehicles didn’t have auto stop protection on the window mechanisms. He didn’t know whether this vehicle had it and he was not prepared to take the chance of his fingers being crushed.
Stone said he still had the gloves, which “bore the marks on their tops which would demonstrate the truth of his version”.
The magistrate who convicted Stone, at the time said “common sense says that if you are simply removing your hands from a window which is closing, you would release your grip from that window and move our hands away as swiftly as possible”.
But Judge Tuchten said Stone’s version was plausible and should be given the benefit of the doubt.
He said he could not find that Stone had the intention to break the window and overturned the guilty verdict.
Pretoria News