II EDITOR'S COMMENT WORTHY OF HIS HIRE
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• Question: If a haulier hires a temporary driver to do a day's work, and during that time the driver is stopped by the police and found to be outside his driving hours, who is to blame?
Normally, as a magazine that frequently advises hauliers on how to stay within the law, Commercial Motor would be pleased to provide the answer. Unfortunately, we don't know the answer. And neither, it seems, does the Road Haulage Association and that is what makes it, and many of its members so hot under the collar. And rightly so.
How is it in this day and age that such an anomaly still exists in the road traffic law? Did none of the faceless bureaucrats who spent interminable hours thrashing out EC hours law ever stop to consider this problem? Apparently not.
It now seems likely that the only way the matter will be resolved will be to get a definitive answer through a test case. But by then it will be too late. By then an honest haulier will have been dragged into court charged with the actions of an individual over whom they had little or no control. Before that happens the Department of Transport should get together with the Department of Employment and end the anomaly once and for all, otherwise an awful lot of money is going to be wasted in court.
It is quite justifiable to expect that an agency which supplies a temporary driver should ensure that such a person is fit for employment. After all, if it provided a driver to a haulier claiming that he was the holder of a Class I HGV licence when he was not then the customer could quite rightly claim a breach of contract. The same principle, therefore, should surely apply in a case where a temporary driver was legally unfit for the job by turning up for work with insufficient hours left.
Principles, sadly, don't come into it — at least when the temporary drivers are being supplied by fly-by-night agencies, who are subject to insufficient controls, and who are motivated by the "one born every minute" philosophy.
Any employment agency providing a temporary driver should be prepared to provide written evidence to the hiring company confirming that such a driver is both physically and legally fit for work. If the agency you deal with won't put their reputation on the line alongside yours then stop dealing with them — double quick. Any company not prepared to guarantee its products is certainly not going to take responsibility for any defect.