Driver fined for pin
Page 16
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
tachograph traces
• A driver who drew traces on to his tachograph chart with a pin was ordered to pay fines and costs of £450 after admitting a series of drivers hours and tachograph offences before Rochdale magistrates.
Graham Foster of Bellshill Crescent, Rochdale, pleaded guilty to two offences of falsifying tachograph charts, two offences of taking insufficient daily rest and one offence of driving for more than 4 hours without 45 minutes break.
Prosecuting, John Heaton said Faster had driven for eight consecutive days without taking a weekly rest period, had driven for five hours without a 45minute break and only taken a daily rest period of eight hours. On one chart there were gaps in the trace that appeared to have been filled in at a later date by hand.
On another chart, the odometer reading had been wound back by 20 kilometres, said Heaton.
In April 1993, Foster had been given a conditional discharge for two offences of failing to take daily rest, three false records offences and two offences of exceeding the daily driving limit.
For Foster, Michael Cunningham said that it was difficult for an HGV driver to stop and take a break. It was ludicrous, he said, that there were no services or truck. stops on some roads. What was a driver meant to do, stop on the hard shoulder?
Foster had also genuinely believed that he could take a daily rest period of eight hours.
Even the prosecution conceded that Foster filling the gaps in with a pin was not a sophisticated chart falsification. He had been carrying foodstuffs for the Co-Op: if a driver does not arrive at the regional distribution point within his delivery window, he is turned away. So what should he do?
The magistrates fined Foster £100 for falsifying a record in May 1992, as he was in breach of his conditional discharge for that offence, with no separate penalty for the other six offences for which he had a conditional discharge. The court also fined him £100 on each of the false records offences now before the court, with a conditional discharge for 12 months for the two weekly rest offences and no separate penalty for the daily rest and hour driving offences.
The court ordered Foster to pay £150 towards the costs of the prosecution.