Commercial vehicles' loading fines
Page 31
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
FINES totalling £266,801 were imposed last year for offences relating to the loading of commercial vehicles.
Of the 23,248 offences dealt with by the police in this category, 18,923 resulted in convictions and 3,361 were dealt with by means of written warnings by the police.
Statistics published by the Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins, show that there were 26,096 cases dealt with by magistrates' courts relating to work records and employment offences.
Of these 20,393 resulted in convictions and the imposition of fines totalling £164,202.
Drivers or employers failing to keep or produce proper records accounted for 17,597 of the convictions and failure to observe limits on hours of driving, duty and rest periods, for another 2,094. In the Crown Courts there were three cases of suspended jail sentences for falsification of records and three immediate prison sentences for infringement of operators' licence regulations.
Of the loading offences 7,938 convictions resulted from exceeding maximum gross weight or axle weight, and 5,483 for causing danger by reason of insecure loads.
Long and projecting loads resulted in 1,128 convictions.
There were 1,401 cases of trailer offences of which 784 resulted in convictions and the imposition of £4,318 fines. Unladen weight not marked on goods vehicles accounted for 1,219 convictions.
Prosecutions for operators' licence offences totalled 5,353, for which there were 4,001 convictions and £47,279 fines.