Fines for Fellows and four drivers
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• Tarporley haulier John Fellows has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling 21,000 for permitting four drivers' hours offences, after Winsford magistrates accepted evidence that he had been previously warned on two occasions by a traffic examiner.
Fellows, who trades as John M Fellows Transport, denied three offences of permitting drivers to exceed 41/2 hours driving without taking necessary breaks, and one offence of permitting a driver to take insufficient daily rest.
Prosecuting for the North Western Traffic Area, Graham Wood said that Fellows had turned a blind eye to the obvious, because he was aware that offences had been committed in the past and should have taken steps to prevent them happening again.
A lax system could encourage drivers to believe they would get away with it, and Fellows had admitted that at the time of the offences, in July and August of last year, only random checks of the tachograph charts were being made.
The magistrates rejected a defence submission that evidence of the previous warnings was inadmissable, and traffic examiner James Webster said that in the spring of 1987 he had warned Fellows after discovering quite a few offences committed by a number of drivers, Defending, Christopher Gaskelt said there was no express duty on an employer to check every single tachograph chart. Offences had been discovered on something less than 5% of the charts. With such a low percentage it was possible that a diligent employer checking a reasonable number of charts would never have discovered that offences were being committed. The system appeared to have kept matters right for 95% of the time, he said. In reply, Wood argued that Fellows had been put on special notice by the previous warning, and once he was aware of the previous irregularities he should have checked every chart and warned his employees.
The magistrates found the charges proved, fining Fellows £500 with 2600 costs.
The drivers involved were Peter Evans, fined £50 on one offence; Mark Nicholas, fined £50 on one offence; and Stephen Sharp, fined £100 on two offences. They were each ordered to pay 210 costs.
A fourth Fellows driver, Christopher Woodward, was fined £75 for falsifying a tachograph chart and £50 for withdrawing a chart from his tachograph without authority. He was also ordered to pay £10 prosecution costs.