12,250 fine for third man
Page 20
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The third North
Wales tipper Operator to appear before Hintshire magistrates accused of falsifying tachograph records has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £2,250.
Northop-based Emlyn Houston pleaded guilty to 24 offences. At an earlier court two other owner-drivers were ordered to pay £4,400 in fines and costs.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, Albert Oldfield said Houston carried construction materials from quarries in North Wales to various sites in the North-West.
When traffic examiner Geoff Whitley inspected tachograph charts for January to August 1998 he was not satisfied with the rest periods shown as they appeared to coincide with movements in quarries and at sites. He took possession of the records to make a more thorough investigation and when they were compared with comput erised delivery notes he found the vehicle was clearly in motion when rest periods were recorded. The amounts of time that had been falsely recorded varied from 15 to 55 minutes.
When he was interviewed, Houston had admitted that he had turned the mode switch to rest and removed the fuse from the tachograph.
For Houston, Tim Culp said that the haulage industry was in decline and the fuel escalator imposed for environmental reasons was hitting the industry very hard, particularly the smaller operator.
There were many in the tipper industry who did not do their job properly and it was extremely competitive, he added. It was a difficult business in which to survive and that was what had led Houston to commit these offences. The irony was that the 24 instances of falsification only concealed about nine hours offences. There was no allegation of excessive driving or failures to take sufficient daily or weekly rest, arid the offences did not give rise to any significant road safety dangers. Houston had been driving for nearly 40 years and the only previous blemish on his record had been a minor fixed-penalty speeding offence.
Fining Houston £2,000 with £250 costs, the magistrates said that these were serious offences which were regarded as fraud. The regulations were there for road safety reasons, as Houston must have known as a truck driver.