Tanker owners fined following fatal accident
Page 44
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE owners of a 24-ton tanker which ran out of control down a steep bank leading into Durham City and piled into a line of stationary cars, killing Dr. Edward Primrose, Durham University medical officer, were fined £10 with £25 costs at Durham Magistrates Court on Monday for allowing it on the road with ineffective brakes. The driver was fined £5 and had his licence endorsed.
A Ministry of Transport examiner, Mr. T. Marsh, said that the lorry, owned by Frank Penty Ltd.. of Bradford, had an air leak from the brake-operating cylinder on the fourth axle.
"In my opinion it was this, coupled with the fact that the air compressor took an excessive length of time to build up the pressure in the reservoir, which caused the accident", he said. Mr. Marsh said that the leak would take time to develop and when he removed the rubber seal from the cylinder he found it to be "badly worn".
Mr. John Robson, managing director of J. L. Robson and Son Ltd., a firm of heavy vehicle repairers, of Stockton, said that the leak could have been caused by grit a matter of seconds before the accident.
"In my opinion it was the inexperience of the driver with these type of brakes which caused the accident. He had already stopped twice up the road, so I see no reason why anyone should think that the air leak had been there all along."
Mr. Patrick Kenny, on behalf of the firm, said that shortly before the accident the lorry had undergone a complete mechanical overhaul and it was doing its first trip under contract since then when the accident happened. The driver, Mr. William Dunning, aged 41, of Sunderland—a petrol tanker driver for 16 years—said that after stopping a number of times while coming down Claypath Bank into Durham, he was forced to stop again owing to a queue of traffic.
"I put my fOot down for the third time and nothing happened. I attempted to pull over to the offside of the road and run into an Electricity Board lorry which was coming up the hill. Unfortunately, I glanced off this lorry and the steering was jarred from my hands. I then ran into the parked vehicles."