The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of an ambulance driver who passed a red light on an emergency run คำพิพากษาฎีกาที่ 8155/2555: รถฉุกเฉินผ่านสัญญาณไฟแดงได้ ศาลฎีกาเห็นพ้องให้ยกฟ้อง

SUPREME COURT DECISION No. 8155/2555
Year: 2012 (B.E. 2555)
Relevant provisions: Penal Code Section 291; Land Traffic Act B.E. 2522 Sections 4(19), 43, 75(4), 157; Criminal Procedure Code Section 192 paragraph 1
Outcome: charge dismissed. The Court of Appeal Region 4 reversed the conviction and the Supreme Court agreed.

SUMMARY
An ambulance driver on an emergency run passed a red light and collided with a motorcycle, killing its rider. The Court of First Instance convicted him under Penal Code Section 291 and sentenced him to two years, reduced by one third to one year and four months. The Court of Appeal Region 4 reversed and dismissed the charge, and the Supreme Court agreed, so the acquittal stood. An emergency vehicle may lawfully pass a signal requiring it to stop if it slows appropriately, so running the red light was not itself negligence; and because the prosecution had pleaded no negligent act other than running the red light, no conviction was available on any other basis.

FACTS OF THE CASE
The defendant drove a government hospital van, taking a patient from Ban Dung Crown Prince Hospital to Udon Thani Centre Hospital on his superior's orders, with his headlights and the warning beacon on the roof switched on. Entering a junction, he turned right across the path of a motorcycle travelling straight ahead, whose rider had a green light. Both vehicles were damaged and the motorcyclist later died. The prosecution charged him under Penal Code Section 291 and Land Traffic Act Sections 43 and 157, pleading his negligence as entering the junction in breach of the red light.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Court of First Instance: convicted under Penal Code Section 291 and Land Traffic Act Sections 43 and 157, treated as a single act breaching several provisions and punished under the heavier one; two years' imprisonment, reduced by one third under Penal Code Section 78 for testimony useful to the proceedings, leaving one year and four months.
Court of Appeal Region 4: reversed and dismissed the charge.
Supreme Court: agreed with the Court of Appeal. The prosecutor's appeal failed.

COURT'S HOLDING
A vehicle answering the description in Section 4(19) of the Land Traffic Act B.E. 2522 is an emergency vehicle, and under Section 75(4) its driver may pass a traffic signal or sign requiring him to stop, provided he reduces speed as the circumstances require. Passing the red light was therefore lawful and was not in itself negligence. Because the prosecution had pleaded the defendant's negligence solely as breaching the red light, and had not pleaded the facts that would make his driving negligent notwithstanding that right, the court could not punish him even if he had passed the signal without slowing or taking due care: Criminal Procedure Code Section 192 paragraph 1 forbids conviction on an act outside the charge. The Court of Appeal Region 4 was right to raise the point of its own motion as a question of law concerning public order, and the Supreme Court agreed with it. The prosecutor's appeal failed.

LEGAL ANALYSIS
Two rules do the work here and they are worth separating, because the case is usually cited for the first when the second is what decided it.

The first is substantive. Section 4(19) of the Land Traffic Act defines an emergency vehicle, and Section 75(4) gives its driver a right to pass a signal that would otherwise require him to stop, qualified only by a duty to reduce speed as the circumstances require. That right is what removed the unlawfulness of passing the red light. It is not a blanket immunity: the duty to slow survives, and a driver who ignores it can still be negligent.

The second is procedural and is the one that produced the acquittal. The prosecution pleaded the negligent act as entering the junction against the red light and nothing else. Once the red light ceased to be the wrongful act, there was nothing left in the charge to convict on. Section 192 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Procedure Code stops a court convicting on facts the prosecution has not alleged, so even a finding that the defendant failed to slow or to take due care could not have saved the case. The Court of Appeal raised this itself, and the Supreme Court confirmed that it was entitled to, because a conviction outside the charge is a question of law concerning public order.

The practical lesson runs against the intuition the facts invite: a fatal collision after a red light did not produce criminal liability, because the driver had a right to be there and the indictment was drawn too narrowly to reach anything else.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
If you are prosecuted over a road death, read the charge before you read the evidence: the prosecution is confined to the negligent act it has pleaded, and a charge drawn narrowly around a traffic violation collapses if that violation turns out to be lawful. If you drove an ambulance, fire appliance, police vehicle or another vehicle within Section 4(19), establish that status and that your warning lights were operating, then show that you reduced speed as Section 75(4) requires, because that duty is the part of the exemption that can still be lost.

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Note: This is an English-language summary of the Thai original judgment.
For the authoritative Thai text, please refer to the Thai version above
or visit deka.supremecourt.or.th.