Boss failed to tadde tacho cheat
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An East Yorkshire caravan transporter who did nothing after discovering that one of his drivers was falsifying tachograph records has had his licence suspended for a fortnight.
Holme upon Spalding Moor-based caravan haulier Terence Arnold, trading as Wichtona Specialised Supplies, holds a licence for two vehicles and two trailers.
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At a hearing before North Eastern Traffic Commissioner Tom Macariney, traffic examiner Alan Dawson said that Arnold ran a number of vehicles under 3.6 tonnes and one large vehicle. An examination of tachograph charts for a threemonth period revealed that driver Terence Bayram had falsified charts on 42 occasions by using Arnold's name and the name of a friend, Gary Norton, The writing on the charts had been made by the same person and there was no evidence of double manning. There were 16 occasions when the daily driving limit was exceeded, in one case by as much as 3hr 6min.
When interviewed, Bayram had said Arnold required the vehicle back for ajob the following morning and night-out expenses were not allowed. Arnold had admitted causing false records to be made by not taking action when he realised that Bayram was using his name and Norton's on the charts and by not planning the runs so that they could be done legally.
In reply to Paul Carless, for Arnold, Dawson agreed that it had been a very clumsy attempt at deception. Arnold said he had not told Bayram to use false names on the charts. Bayram had wanted to get home at night because of a problem at home. Arnold realised that he had made a serious mistake in not stopping what had been going on. He had not made a fortune out of what had happened. It was not true that he did not pay overnight expenses. If the licence was revoked he did not think that the business would survive.
He undertook to have the tachograph records analysed by an outside agency and to have the drivers trained by a professional body Carless said Arnold had not set out to break the law and had a good record in every other respect.
Suspending the licence for 14 days, the TC said that Arnold obviously had tired drivers on the road-10% of accidents were caused by tired drivers and TCs took tired drivers as seriously as drunken drivers. If he thought Arnold had suggested to his drivers that they falsify records he would have revoked the licence. For the future, Arnold was very much on a knife edge.