Haulier jailed for blown tyre disaster
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• Although 200 miles away in his office near Glasgow when one of his lorries last June collided with a car, killing its occupants on M6 near Warrington, the managing director of a haulage company was found responsible for the accident and was jailed for nine months at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday. He was Robert Millar, 52, of Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire. He was disqualified from driving for 18 months.
With his firm, Robert Millar (Contractors) Ltd., he was convicted of counselling and procuring the six deaths by dangerous driving. The firm was fined £750 and ordered to pay the cost of the prosecution, estimated to exceed £1,000 for the six-day hearing.
Mr. Justice Fisher told Millar: "You are primarily the person to blame for this terrible disaster. My sentence must reflect the part you played and the way you chose to conduct your defence. I do not think a fine is sufficient punishment." Found guilty of causing the six deaths, the driver, Anthony Hart, 30, Staemuir, Port Glasgow, was fined £25 with a 12 months' driving ban. The judge told him: "I consider you less to blame than your employer."
Mr. Alan Booth. prosecuting, said the accident was entirely due to the blow-out of a badly worn front offside tyre. Hart's lorry careered at 50 mph across the motorway's centre reservation and collided with a southbound car, killing two grandparents, two parents and two children. Mr. Booth said the lorry driver, Millar and the firm must have known about the condition of the tyre.
Both men and the company had pleaded not guilty.
Hart said he had asked for the tyre to be changed before he left Scotland, but nothing was done. He thought the tyre was capable of making the 700 miles trip from Glasgow to Cheshire.
Millar said the vehicle had six new tyres, including the front offside, fitted three weeks before the accident. The tyre that burst must have done 60,000 miles and was in a dangerous condition. "That was not my tyre that burst," he said. "Someone must have taken my new tyre off and replaced it with this old one during the trip."
Hart. in the witness box, denied the suggestion by Millar's counsel that he had taken off one new tyre and sold it.