Fuses could 'tempt interference'
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• Drivers' hours and tachograph offences, speeding and interference with speed limiters have led to a four-week suspension of the licence for eight vehicles and six trailers held by Newton Stewart haulier Robert Houston.
After suspending Houston's licence, Scottish Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts said he would take up with Leyland Daf the matter of speed limiter fuses being marked with yellow paint, which he felt offered a temptation to the unscrupulous driver.
Houston agreed that his drivers had been inserting defective fuses to bypass the speed limiters, but said he had been unaware of the yellow paint marks on the fuseboxes found by police and a traffic examiner.
He said he had taken the matter up with his Leyland Daf
distributor, who had written to say that all new Leyland Dais carried that marking as part of the warranty code on their vehicles. Betts said that in the three years since Houston had appeared at a previous public inquh-y, he had been convicted of five offences relating to drivers' hours and tachographs, two of overloading and one of a defective speed limiter,
During the same period, Houston's drivers had been convicted of 17 offences, three of which related to excessive speed. Two further instances of speeding had been discovered in recent checks by the police and 20% of 120 tachograph charts examined in a spot check clearly showed repeated speeding.
The commissioner said he felt very firm action was needed. Although there was no evidence that Houston had coerced his drivers to "pull the fuses", he obviously knew it was going on and had done nothing to stamp it out, said Betts. His inertia was tantamount to permitting the offences by his drivers.
Operators who chose to ignore their obligations must expect to be penalised severely, he said. The public were very concerned about the safety of heavy goods vehicles and the behaviour of Houston's drivers—to which he "turned a blind eye"—did much to damage the industry's image.