Drivers on hours charges
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• Three drivers employed by Bulldog International Transport Ex press of Andover have appeared before the town's magistrates accused of hours and tacho offences.
Janek Pawinski pleaded not guilty to 16 offences of exceeding the daily limit and taking insufficient daily rest. He admitted three similar offences and five of exceeding 41/2 hours driving without the required break.
Prosecuting, Maureen Truss said that in the case of Kelly vs Shulman, Mr Justice Hutchison had said that the term "day" meant successive periods of 24 hours beginning with the resumption of driving after the last weekly rest period, but in that case he had been dealing with weekly rest and not daily driving.
Police sergeant Anthony Brown said the moment the 24hour period was fixed it was possible for a driver to work 29 hours 59 minutes, and that defeated the whole objective of the regulations.
PC James Marsh said that "any period of 24 hours" was generally interpreted as each period beginning at the end of a daily rest period.
In reply to Truss, transport consultant Keith Lawrence accepted that a new 24-hour period started at the end of a daily rest period. Following an adjournment he advised Pawinski to change his plea to guilty on 12 of the offences he had originally denied.
Lawrence maintained that from the charts it was possible that Pawinski had taken the permitted 12 hours split rest on the other four occasions. He agreed that periods of ''rest" be was saying were shown on the charts were interrupted, but said that possibly someone else had moved the vehicle or the driving had been off the public road.
The magistrates found Pawinski guilty and fined him a total of £75.
William Chapman was fined £75 for three tachograph offences, and Frank Topharn was also fined £75 for failing to take sufficient weekly rest.
The hearing of charges against another 16 Bulldog drivers was adjourned until September. They are accused of a series of offences including falsifying tachograph charts, altering or causing charts to be altered and exceeding the hour limits.