Demount body lost on the M6
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• Wood Fabrications (Darwen), which admitted using a truck in a dangerous condition after a demountable body came off one of its vehicles on the M6, has been given an absolute discharge.
The body's locking mechanism had failed while the vehicle was travelling on the motorway in May, Penrith magistrates were told.
Consultant engineer David Rimmer said that the release mechanism was manually operated. The lever was springloaded and was held in the 'off' position by a clip. Police photographs showed the lever to be in the off position; the damage to the locking device would have been caused by the movement of the body. He would have expected such damage to have occurred within an hour's driving.
Police vehicle examiner Alan Cuthbertson said that in his opinion the damage to the locking mechanism was of longer standing. The fact that it failed to function was due to the damage and a hydraulic leak.
Ray Green, the driver of the vehicle, said he had mounted the body at Trowbridge the day before the accident. He had locked it, checked that the mechanism was in the fully locked position and drove to Inverness, where he discharged the load without demounting the body. The following morning he checked that the mechanism was still fully locked before setting off. He had stopped at a cafe at Beat tock for his statutory break, approximately an hour's drive from the scene of the accident.
Philip Ireland, the company's managing director, said there had been no defects when the vehicle was last inspected, and none had been reported by the driver in the intervening period. The company had been running such vehicles for 15 years and had never had a body come off before.
Defending, John Backhouse said a possible explanation was that the vehicle had been tampered with at Beattock. There was no way that the company could have known, or could have done anything to prevent it. The magistrates fined the company 250 costs. They gave Green an absolute discharge on a similar offence and did not endorse his driving licence.