Irish targeting denied
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MA vehicle examiner denied that his colleagues had been targeting Irish vehicles when Northern Ireland haulier Dukes Transport (Craigavon) appeared at disciplinary proceedings before Eastern Deputy Licensing Authority Humphrey Lewis.
The company had been called before the DLA in Cambridge after receiving 31 prohibition and variation notices over the past four years.
DOT vehicle examiner Norman Barnett said he had put a defect notice on one vehicle for a tyre which was still legal, but he had thought that it would be helpful to warn the company that the tyre was becoming worn.
He agreed with Jonathan Lawton, for Dukes, that he had put a prohibition on a trailer for inoperative stop lights, and that when the bulbs were changed he had said that it would be 10 days before the prohibition could be lifted following an examination at a test station. He did not feel that it would have been reasonable to have asked for the bulbs to be replaced, rather than to impose a prohibition. After Barnett had denied that Irish vehicles were being targeted, Lawton said the vehicles that were operated out of Dukes' Crick depot with English number plates had not been stopped in 10 years.
Barnett agreed that in one case the vehicle manufacturer, Volvo, was in correspondence with the VI about the standards being applied to particular allegations of wear.
Consultant engineer Stanley Thomas said he thought Dukes' maintenance and the condition of its vehicles was as good as could be expected. If vehicles of any major operator were stopped there would be a similar pattern. None of the prohibitions arose from maintenance failures, but were for defects that could have happened at any time. It was unusual to see a defect notice issued for a legal tyre.
He had no doubt, in his 40 years' experience, that Irish and Continental operators' vehicles were targeted.
Lawton pointed out that no prosecutions had arisen out of any of the complaints. The hearing was adjourned.