Court Opinion

ID: 9697741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:28:05.422528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:35.008641
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot join in the Majority’s conclusion that a driveway within the confines of a trailer park, and upon which the defendant was observed driving while intoxicated, is not a “highway” or “trafficway” under the Motor Vehicle Code so as to sustain the defendant’s conviction and sentence for violating 75 Pa.C.S. § 3731(a)(1) & (4).
Under 75 Pa.C.S. § 102, a “highway” is defined to include a roadway open to the use of the public and situate on the grounds of a “private school”. Similarly, “trafficway” is defined in the same section to encompass property “open to the public” for vehicular travel as a matter of “custom”.
At bar, we have a trailer park on which the defendant, and the owner of the vehicle he struck while attempting to leave the grounds, resided. No one disputes the singularity of the road serving as the only access route to and from the trailer park. Further, there is no indication from the accounting by even the Majority’s recitation of the facts that restrictions were placed on the “public” seeking to use the roadway to visit, do work for or make deliveries to those in the park area. Thus, the “private” nature of the roadway did not inhibit entry or exit by the public at large, be it to perform a task or renew acquaintances with those who reside there.
*462Unlike the Majority, I read the cases cited in the body of its opinion to be supportive of a conclusion upholding the trial court’s judgment of sentence. In my reading of the law, where a roadway is travelable by and accessible to the public it should be denominated a “trafficway”. The nature of the road in question, in the sense that it is on “private” property, should not detract from its being characterized as open to public ingress and egress.
Because I do not read the facts and the law so narrowly as to embrace the position of the Majority, I respectfully dissent from the reversal of the judgment of sentence.