The man who flipped the bird

Watson told police that Cuthbert had been at the wheel during the fatal crash. Photo / NZ Police

The judge passes sentence and the man wearing the purple fleece, track pants and the Reeboks with the flapping sole is ushered from the dock to the door to the cells. He turns towards a small group in the Auckland High Court public gallery, extends an arm and flicks out an middle finger.

The man who flipped the bird is Wally David Watson, 50. The gesture seemed brutal and incongruous given all that had just been said on his behalf; how this time he had learned, would never again drink or drive a vehicle.

But actions spoke louder than words. "That simply has not been the pattern of your life," Justice Patrick Keane said of Watson's long history of driving pissed, fast and unlicensed.

Ditto the alcohol rehab Watson promised to do. Four months' live-in treatment in the past hadn't changed his ways. His driving had since seen him jailed several times.

Watson has made a habit of flipping the bird at society.

He was convicted this month of the manslaughter of Gavin Cuthbert, his flatmate and drinking buddy. Both were disqualified drivers, both were drunk, and the car they were in was flying.

Watson, at 1001 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath, had 2.5 times the legal blood alcohol limit for an adult (400 micrograms) - a level that brings automatic disqualification. He was at the wheel of Cuthbert's Chevrolet, the court found, when it rounded a bend in suburban Glen Eden, West Auckland doing 90 to 100km p/h, slewed across the road, swiped a power pole, crashed into a wall and flipped on its back, crushing Cuthbert. Watson walked away unscathed.

Their ilk are defined by alcohol. When police visited the men's associates making routine case inquiries about breakfast time, a source told the Herald, they were drinking. An alleged sighting of Watson driving after the fatal accident was reported.

Those Watson gave the finger were the grieving and aggrieved: Cuthbert's wife, Matty, and son, Sam.

"Same to you!" said Matty, affronted, while Sam, leapt to his feet and offered to take Watson on right there and then. Sam is 16, wrought, rudderless, angry. He's struggling without his dad, says his mum. His life "has turned to ashes", says his victim impact report.

Moments earlier Watson had been sentenced to 8.5 years' jail with a non-parole period of four. As well as manslaughter, he was convicted of driving while disqualified and drink-driving, bringing to 23 his tally of drink-driving convictions and to 26 the number of times he's been caught driving while disqualified.

What so angered the bereaved was that Watson blamed the dead. His claim that Cuthbert was behind the wheel was contradicted by the finding of both the police's Serious Crash Unit and an analysis by Professor John Raine, head of engineering at AUT. The prosecutor dismissed it as as another deception from a man with 21 aliases.

Watson was found sitting uninjured beside the driver's side of the wreck while Cuthbert had been flung partially through the centre of the windscreen coming to rest trapped under the passenger's side of the vehicle.

Judges don't have the power to ban a driver for life and so Justice Keane disqualified Watson "indefinitely", which means he can reapply for a licence after a year and a day. So long as he satisfies a Ministry of Health-approved drug and alcohol assessment centre that he has dealt with his alcoholism, the New Zealand Transport Authority will end his disqualification and he can re-sit his licence. Potentially that could happen quite quickly after he is out of jail.

Does this mean the premise of the law is that driving is a right rather than a privilege? Probably, says the Automobile Association's Mike Noon. Most people would agree, he says, that Watson should not be permitted to ever drive again.

Most people are fed up, he says, with recidivist drink drivers. And there are plenty of them. Of 32,603 drink drivers processed last year, 6702 had been caught at least three times. Transport Ministry studies show that alcohol and/or drugs is a factor in a third of fatal crashes.

"We are catching these drivers but they are so quickly released back into the pool," says Noon, "[that] they come back on to the roads and they still have their addiction problems."

This year the Government has toughened penalties (alcohol vehicle interlocks for repeat drink drivers, doubling the maximum to 10-years in jail for dangerous drivers who cause death - previously "the cheapest way to kill someone", notes Noon).

But the association wants alcohol and drug courts introduced and compulsory alcohol treatment trialled.

Lifetime loss of licence "seems like a very good idea to me", says Noon. The law allows for the worst offenders in other crimes to be kept in jail forever (preventative detention), so why not ban the worst drivers for life?

But would that make a difference with the likes of Watson who was already indefinitely disqualified when he killed.

Probably not, says Transport Minister Steven Joyce. "A lot of these very bad recidivist drink drivers are operating without a licence at the time they cause the damage.

"It would be great to think that [they] would respect that they have a bit of paper saying they can't drive but ... they don't."

Police are using number plate recognition machines as one measure to target high-risk drivers. The challenge, says Joyce, is how to separate their drinking from their driving. More work, he says, is needed on drug and alcohol recovery.

The association wants drivers with readings over twice the legal limit (about one-third of all drivers who fail the alcohol test) to be ordered to do an alcohol assessment programme and interlocks to be compulsory rather than at the judge's discretion on cars of recidivist drink drivers.

And the locks should be installed on conviction rather than - as the law stands - when the licence is returned.

Overseas experience of alcohol interlocks, which make the car inoperable if the driver's breath indicates intoxication, is promising, says Joyce.

Cuthbert had been disqualified the month before the crash and, according to Matty, had lost his licence before.

Matty had been married to Cuthbert 28 years having met him at a dance three decades ago and, although they separated six months before the accident ("I didn't like the drinking"), they were not estranged. They saw each other daily, she says.

Cuthbert liked fishing and classic cars. He used an inheritance from his mother to buy his first Chevrolet.

"Gavin got to know Wally through a mutual friend, then Wally asked if he could move in with him and his flatmate."

Matty doesn't believe her husband drove during his latest disqualification, "He wanted his licence back too much." The judge, however, noted that Cuthbert allowed a drunk disqualified driver to take the wheel of his car.

Police crash investigators don't use the word "accident". "We call them crashes," says one investigator. "I've never attended anything where you could say it couldn't have been prevented, whether it was a failure to indicate, braking too late or whatever. They are all preventable.

"But there is a big difference between someone who makes a mistake and [Watson]. To me he will come out of jail, he will go straight back behind the wheel, straight back to the piss and he may well kill someone else."

Joyce says legislating lifetime bans would add no more than a feelgood factor as vehicles can already be instantly confiscated if a disqualified driver is found at the wheel. The investigator, though, likes the idea for its clarity and its message that driving is a privilege.