VI was warned about death-crash company
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It by Charles Young
Ten people killed in a coach crash may have died unnecessarily following a Vehicle Inspectorate official's decision to over-rule staff who had tried to shut down the coach company months before.
Nine American tourists and the driver died when a coach belonging to London-based Travellers Coach Company careered down an embankment off the M2 in Kent in November 1993.
An inquest later found that the tourists had been unlawfully killed as the driver had exceeded his hours and had had less than five hours' sleep the night before the crash. The coach's speed limiter had also been switched off. Earlier that year at least two VI traffic examiners had received tip-offs claiming that Travellers Coach Company was flouting the hours regulations and putting lives at risk.
One of them, Graham Hart, claims he had even seen a coach driver go over his hours.
Hart and his manager. Bob Harem subsequently demanded to see Traveller's tachograph charts but the company refused, claiming the examiners had no authority to do so.
When Travellers applied for the renewal of its Operator's Licence in February, Hart saw this as an opportunity for the Traffic Commissioner to use his power to see the charts. He wrote to the Traffic Area Office in Eastbourne outlining his worries about the firm and advising the TAO to delay the licence renewal until the charts had been examined. But this advice was overruled by Rob Lintern, Hart and Harper's manager, who told a clerk at the TAO to renew the licence.
The examiners continued with their attempts to prosecute the coach company by forwarding prosecution documents to the VI's enforcement section in Eastbourne in March 1993. Harper says these papers were with the VI for five months before they were reviewed.
On 10 August Harper claims he was told that the case would not be prosecuted because the prosecution documents were defective.
Three months later the coach crashed, partly because of the practices Harper was trying to expose in court.
After the inquest relatives of the victims sued the major shareholder of Travellers Coach Company in the American courts. They were awarded an undisclosed sum rumoured to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Following the inquest the traffic division of Kent Police successfully prosecuted Travellers following a search of its premises. Travellers was fined £9.000 under the Construction & Use Regulations. IN The issues concerning Traveller's Coach Company came to light at the recent employment tribunal following Harper's dismissal from the VI ( CM30 Sept-6 Oct).
Statement from the VI:
"The investigation into Travellers Coaches was being pursued at a time when there was an ongoing issue about the powers of Traffic Examiners, who had fairly recently begun working under the auspices of VI, to require production of tachograph charts under Section 99 of the Transport Act 1988.
"The issue was even given coverage in Commercial Motor (14-20 January 1993).
'Why did we overrule Graham Hart's advice? Because his advice was one part of the overall advice on the case and had to be considered alongside all the other facts."