• The High Court set an important precedent last week
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
ruling that drivers can work more than six daily driving periods within six days, provided that they do not push the total number of hours driven, since their last weekly rest, to a figure in excess of the maximum permitted in six consecutive daily driving periods.
Patrick Kelly, a driver with Redhead Freight of Dungiven in Northern Ireland, was appealing to the High Court against a conviction given against him by Bradford Magistrates on four offences of not taking 45 hours consecutive rest after working six daily driving periods. (CM 29 October-4 November and 8-14 October 1987).
Justice Hutchison said that the magistrates were wrong to conclude that in the calculation of driving periods, "day" meant any period of 24 hours commencing at midnight. He felt that the view of both defence and prosecution that "day" meant successive periods of 24 hours beginning at whatever time the driver resumed after a weekly rest period — a "rolling period" of 24 hours — was the correct interpretation.
The prosecution argued, however, that Article 6(1) did not permit driving during the period after the sixth daily driving period in which a driver could postpone the commencement of his weekly rest period, stating that a driver must, after no more than six daily driving periods, take a weekly rest period.
The defence maintained the phrase "if the total driving time over the six days does not exceed the maximum corresponding to six daily driving periods" would not have been included in the regulations if it had not been envisaged that a driver could have seven or eight daily driving periods in six days.
Hutchison said that every driver must have a weekly rest period, as defined by Article 8, between midnight Sunday and midnight on the following Sunday.