French 'target British'
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• An owner-driver on international work has become so fed up with constantly being stopped by French police that he is asking his employer to change his routes to avoid France.
Weston-super-Mare-based Russell Neath says the last straw came last week when he was stopped four times by different gendarmes. The first three found nothing amiss but the fourth demanded to see the letter of authorisation from his local Traffic Area OffiCe.
Neath, who works out of Davies Turner's Dartford office, had just renewed his 0-licence and says his wife had accidentally removed the letter from his cab. Although he was displaying the new licence on his windscreen and produced the old letter of authorisation, he was fined £350 by the Bourg en Brest police.
Neath says he offered to get the new letter faxed through but the French police would not allow this. "Every time I get stopped it's another two hours of hanging about. It's almost got to the stage where it's target the British again—particularly in the Calais area."