Driver `hides' hours
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Producing a false tachograph chart to a traffic examiner cost Dublin-based lorry driver Gerald Mooney £155 in fines and costs when he appeared before the Maccles field magistrates.
Mooney who is employed by Cargohaul, of Dublin, admitted using a false instrument, namely a forged tachograph chart.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, John Heaton said Mooney's 38-tonner had been stopped in a check at Rostherne. When Mooney produced his tacho records to a traffic examiner, among the charts was one in the name of B Harold. The traffic examiner was suspicious because that chart had been removed from the tachograph 19 minutes before Mooney drove away from Holyhead. When interviewed, Mooney had admitted making a false chart.
Heaton said the charge had been brought under the Forgery Act because the chart had been falsified in the Irish Repubilc. Mooney was guilty of using a false instrument when he produced the chart to the traffic examiner. The motive was clearly an attempt to hide the fact that he had only taken 6hr 40min rest.
For Mooney, Charles Stansfield said it was the most stupid of offences. Because the family car had become unserviceable Mooney had taken his children to school in his tractive unit. He had then gone into work and done some shunting during the day. At the end of the school day he fetched the children, and the next driving he did was down to the ferry His total driving that day was only 49km, or about 30 miles.
Mooney had not been sure whether shunting counted so he had thought that he would play safe and put a chart in the tachograph, but with someone else's name an it.
Although the charge before the court could be a serious one, this case was very much at the bottom end of the scale of seriousness, Stansfield maintained.
Fining Mooney, the magistrates said that they had taken account of the fact that the amount of driving on the day concerned had not been significant.