Weighbridge figure pieried in court
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from a CM correspondent
VEHICLE belonging to A. Sharpley of Wildboar ugh, Cheshire, was given W160 prohibition preventits movement on safety ands until 825kg excess --axle overload had been oved.
he firm and the driver inred, William Wheelton of vsworth, near Macclesfield, eared before the Newcastle er Lyme magistrates last k, charged with overload Er R. Shardlow, a DoE ve e examiner, said that on lary 21 he had stopped and cted the vehicle to a weighbridge at the premises of G. Embrey Ltd, of Newcastle. He issued a GV160 after discovering the overload.
Cross-examined by Mr J. S. Lawton, for the defendants, Mr Shardlow was unable to say on what ground he had determined the vehicle was unsafe enough to justify the issue of a GV160 except to say that the plated weight for the axle had been exceeded.
Mr Shardlow produced an accuracy certificate dated September, 1975, for the weighbridge. He was unable to say whether it had been serviced between January and Sept ember and when it had last been tested for accuracy before January. He admitted that there was a sharp slope at one end of the weighbridge, but he insisted that when the vehicle was weighed its front wheels had rested on the concrete edge of the weighbridge and not on the slope. He agreed that if the wheels had been on the slope the weight shown on the rear axle would have been less.
After Mr Wheelton had given evidence that the front wheels of the vehicle had been on the slope when it was weighed, Mr Lawton sub mitted it would be unsafe for the magistrate to convict the defendants. There was a possibility that the weighbridge was highly unsuitable for weighing axles because of the slope and there was no evidence that the bridge was accurate in January, 1975.
Fining the company £20 with £22.50 costs and the driver £15, the magistrates said that although they found the case proved they felt there were special circumstances that enabled them to view the matter more leniently than usual. lorry which collided with a THE 22-yea7old driver of a holiday coach in Scotland's worst ever bus crash was cleared by a jury at Dumfries last week of causing the death of the coach driver and nine passengers.
The jury of eight men and seven wotrien unanimously found the driVer Paul Colclough not guilty of driving the lorry dangerously and recklessly on A74 north of Beattock, Dumfriesshire on June 16.
But after being out for 90 minutes they found the driVer guilty of an alternative charge of careless driving and he was fined £50 and his licence was endorsed.
Sheriff qordon Nicholson commented that he had to impose a pynalty appropriate to the offenCe and he stressed that he must do so having no regard to the consequences which folloWed from this act of careless driving—it would