Suspended jail for directors
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I Judge Michael Walker senneed two former directors of S Harrison Transport of oncaster to nine months susmded imprisonment last week r aiding and abetting the falsimtion of tachograph charts. Speaking at York Crown aurt last week, the judge said e company was guilty of ounitting offences that fected public safety, such as Le falsification of tachograph karts. He suspended the pris1 terms for two years. Richard Brunton, of High :reet, Dunsville, Doncaster, as said in court to have taken passive role in the affair: he knitted four counts of aiding id abetting drivers to make Ise entries. Malcolm Clegg, Upperfield Road, Maltby, otherham, who was said by le prosecution to have "crack1 the whip" over the corniny's drivers, admitted six milar counts. In addition to le suspended prison sentence legg was fined .E600.
For the prosecution, Kenath Gillance said that initially runton and his wife had ownthe company. It had got into aancial difficulties and in ebruary 1986 they had sold it k a Ken Smart. Brunton had greed to act as transport maner for six years. Smart had in Ken Smart of Leeds, which tJanuary and February 1986 ad been convicted of a large umber of drivers hours off
ences (CM 25 January and 8 February 1986).
Smart had put Clegg into the business in a management role. Increased workloads had been given to the drivers and they had not been able to meet these without breaking the law. The fleet had been increased from four to 11 vehicles; some of the extra vehicles had come from the garage of Ken Smart.
Inquiries by the Department of Transport and North Yorkshire Police had resulted in 12 of the company's drivers being convicted of 88 offences of falsifying charts in July 1987. The means of falsification had varied, but the main method had been to interfere with the tachograph so that rest periods had not been recorded. In every one of the 88 offences before the magistrates, the charts had showed excessive speeds. The drivers had been covering around 7251cm a day and some of them had been averaging 93Iun/h.
Passing sentence, Judge Walker said the regulations were not designed to make life easy for drivers, or as an irritant for eager businessmen. They were there to protect the public from the potential dangers caused by overworked and overtired drivers being tempted to exceed the speed limits to carry out all the work that was put on their shoulders by the two defendents.