Wharfedale 'too lax'
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• Wharfedale Traction of Ilkley, West Yorkshire has been fined £5,300 for allowing its drivers to take insufficient rest, drive for too long and use an unauthorised vehicle.
The company pleaded guilty before Halifax magistrates last week to 16 offences of allowing drivers to take insufficient weekly rest and to exceed their daily driving limit, as well as one offence of using a vehicle without an operator's licence.
Prosecuting for the North Eastern Traffic Area, Richard Wadkin said the hours regula tions were designed to protect the general public and the drivers themselves. HGV drivers were involved in 80% more fatal and serious accidents than car drivers, claimed Wadkin.
The prosecution claimed that the drivers were acting at the behest of the company and that the stakes were commercially quite high. Wharfedale was running expensive 38-tonne vehicles, and the more journeys vehicles and drivers could make, said Wadkin, the more costeffective and profitable it was. Consequently, competitors who sought to work within the law were put at a disadvantage.
Defending, David Smedley said keeping to the hours rules was primarily the responsibility of the drivers. The company entirely refuted the suggestion that it had orchestrated breaches of the regulations or -given the drivers a positive mandate to go out and commit offences for commercial gain. The drivers were paid a flat £205 a week, irrespective of the hours they worked, and the company had perhaps gone wrong in allowing too much discretion_