Com. v. Baughman
| Decision Date | 09 October 1986 |
| Citation | 357 Pa.Super. 535,516 A.2d 390 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Richard Allen BAUGHMAN, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
Anthony S. Guido, DuBois, for appellant.
Joseph A. Curcillo, III, Asst. Dist. Atty., Clearfield, for Com., appellee.
Before ROWLEY, McEWEN and TAMILIA, JJ.
This is an appeal from a judgment of sentence entered by the Court of Common Pleas of Clearfield County. Following a bench trial, appellant Richard Allen Baughman was convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol 75 Pa.C.S. § 3731. Post-trial motions were denied, and appellant was sentenced to thirty days to one year imprisonment, a fine of $500.00, and directed to attend a driving course. We affirm.
Appellant does not deny that he was under the influence of alcohol or that he was operating a motor vehicle. The sole question presented for our review, an issue of first impression, is whether the dirt track, through a field which was open to the public and occasionally used for vehicular traffic, on which appellant was operating the motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, was "a trafficway" as defined by 75 Pa.C.S. § 102.
Appellant was discovered in his vehicle, by a deputy sheriff, attempting to move his car. The car was straddling a railroad track which ran parallel to the "trafficway" in question. At trial, the trafficway was described as a one-lane, dirt road which was on private property and dead-ended. Tire tracks appeared on the dirt from cars occasionally travelling on the surfaceway.
Section 102 of the Vehicle Code, 75 Pa.C.S. § 102, defines trafficway as follows:
"Trafficway." The entire width between property lines or other boundary lines of every way or place of which any part is open to the public for purposes of vehicular travel as a matter of right or custom.
Appellant contends that the phrase "between property lines or other boundary lines" defines "trafficway" so that the term
The restrictive definition appellant urges upon us is inconsistent with the Statutory Construction Act of 1972. Our Court "must construe the words of a statute according to their plain meaning." Commonwealth v. Stanley, 498 Pa. 326, 335, 446 A.2d 583, 587 (1982); see also 1 Pa.C.S. § 1903. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1981) at 260 defines "boundary" as "something...
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