COMMENT
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Ignorance is no excuse
The guilty verdict on two of the three bosses in the Roy Bowles Transport manslaughter trial should send a shiver down the spines of all those managers in road haulage who have ever wondered whether the business was slipping away from them...getting just that little bit out of control.
Among all the words heard in the Old Bailey, the ones that shriek are those from the prosecuting QC who stated that the two RBT company directors were "grossly negligent because they knew, or ought to have known", that RBT driver Andrew Cox was in a dangerously defective state, due to the excessive hours he was working. Cox was an accident waiting to happen. And ultimately that accident happened.
So do you know exactly what your drivers are doing? And if you don't, should you know?
Company transport manager Stephen Bowles was said to have been shocked when accident investigators discovered 83 undeclared tachograph discs in Cox's cab.
If accident investigators looked in any of your wagons would you be in for a shock too?
If you run a road haulage company, or you're a transport manager, and you've ever wondered what your drivers are getting up to out on the road, then remember— one day you could be standing up in court facing the simple question: "And why didn't you know what was going on?"
The overriding message from only the second successful manslaughter prosecution to date against a road haulier is that if you're a manager, ignorance is no excuse. And it's certainly no defence.