Fines follow strike crash
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• A fatal accident on the M4 in January 1984 in which a tanker driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel, led police to suspect the driver's SouthEast London company was falsifying driver's hours records.
The subsequent lengthy investigation ended last week, in the Inner London Crown Court, with the company being fined a total of 21,600, a director £300, and ten drivers amounts varying from to £150.
Judge Clark, presiding, heard how the company Rotahaul Ltd, of Ordnance Wharf in Woolwich, got into difficulties with drivers' hours regulations during the miner's strike. It won a contract to deliver heavy fuel oil to the Didcot power station.
Counsel for four of the drivers at the trial told Judge Clark that the work could, in normal circumstances, have been discharged without difficulty within drivers' hours regulations; but the miners' strike resulted in major delays at Didcot.
One driver, Edward Arthur Bond, of Bury in Lancashire, said he waited in a queue for 13 hours at the power station to discharge his load on one occasion.
The company said it needed to break drivers' hours regulations to fulfill its contract with the Central Electricity Generating Board, because of the delays, but few of the drivers involved made a financial gain from the additional work.
Prosecuting counsel told the court that detailed examination of Rotahaul's tachograph charts and vehicle records, following the M4 crash, showed: "Something like 15% of the fleet mileage, amounting to 76,000km, was unaccounted for on the company's tachograph charts between August 1, 1984 and January 31, 1985.
He said that Alfred George Stacey, of Edenbridge, a founder director of the company, had substituted his name on tachograph charts, even though he had not driven the vehicle to which the chart alluded.
Another non-driver, Frank Leslie Riches, severely injured in a road accident eight years ago and no longer table to drive lorries, had has name placed on the tachograph records.
All 10 of the drivers attending the hearing pleaded guilty to charges of falsifying tachograph charts and altering records, as did Stacey and Riches.