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Bell: rule-breakers will lose 0-licences
Page 12
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• by Mite Jewel
A Traffic Commissioner has given another tough warning that hauliers and drivers who flout their basic legal obligations must expect to have their licences revoked.
North Western TC Beverley Bell insists that some firms—not necessarily "dodgy or cowboy operators"—are just paying lip service to drivers' hours and tachograph rules.
Bell claims that the abuse of speed limiters is also a common problem. "I want to make it plain to all drivers, operators and transport managers that the enforcement agencies are going to stamp out this problem." she says.
The warning came after the TC suspended the entire fleet of Cheshire company Caxios for one week after a conviction for speed limiter offences. The Saughallbased company, which held a restricted licence for eight vehicles and 25 trailers, had already been ordered to pay fines and costs of 21,150 by Chester JPs after admitting two offences of using vehicles when the speed limiters were not controlling their speed. (CM12-18 July) Bell was told how tachograph records showed that the limiter of one vehicle had been defective for a year. The driver had not reported this and the company had not picked it up. The limiter of the second vehicle had also been defective for some time.
However Caxios transport manager Sean Pinches said that since joining the company in December, after the offences took place, he had introduced new systems. Tachograph chart analysis was now contracted out, a written drivers' nil daily defect reporting system had been introduced, the period between inspections had been cut from 12 to six weeks and a revised inspection record brought in.
The TC was concerned that sufficient emphasis was not being given to tachograph analysis. It was not enough to send tachograph charts out for analysis and get the drivers to sign the sheets—operators must use the information effectively, she said.