Court Opinion

ID: 9579636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:56:59.306277+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:38.553902
License: Public Domain

On Defendant's Motion for Rehearing.
Hall, Judge.
The defendant contends that, whatever the law may have been earlier, the enactment in 1953 of Code Ann. § 68-1661, authorizes the charge discussed in Division 3 of this opinion and makes it harmless in the present case. That statute requires that a driver who approaches a railroad crossing “shall stop within 50 feet but not less than 15 feet from the nearest rail *192of such railroad, and shall not proceed until he can do so safely, when: . . . (c) An approaching train is plainly visible and is in hazardous proximity to such crossing.” The defendant argues that to comply with this statute a person must use his sense of sight and hearing before crossing a railroad to determine if a train is plainly visible and in hazardous proximity to the crossing; hence a failure to do so is negligence as a matter of law, and the holding in Cone v. Atlantic C. L. R. Co., 89 Ga. App. 74, supra, prior to Code Ann. § 68-1661, has become obsolete. We need not decide but we will assume that the charge in question would be harmless if the issue of negligence per se alone were involved. In the present case, however, the defendant’s answer alleged both common law negligence and negligence per se in violation of Code Ann. § 68-1661 on the part of the plaintiff’s driver. The evidence created issues of fact as to whether the plaintiff’s driver violated a duty imposed upon him by Code Ann. § 68-1661. The trial judge instructed the jury on ordinary common law negligence and on the provisions of Code Ann. § 68-1661 and its violation as negligence per se, and the jury was required to make a finding on each. The instruction discussed in Division 3 related in this case to ordinary common law negligence, just as it did in the Cone case and other cases cited in this opinion. We do not agree that Code Ann. § 68-1661 makes Justice Bleckley’s reasoning in Richmond &c. R. Co. v. Howard, 79 Ga. 44, supra, unsound and inapplicable at the present time. It is still the law applicable to this instruction respecting common law negligence. This court has recently applied the same reasoning. Etheridge Motors, Inc. v. Haynie, 107 Ga. App. 674 (131 SE2d 212). We adhere to Division 3 of the opinion.

Rehearing denied.

Carlisle, P. J., and Bell, J., concur.