Driver fined on tacho charges
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• Lorry driver Tony Grainger was fined £120 after admitting 12 drivers hours and tachograph offences before the Alfreton magistrates, but an allegation that he had altered a tachograph chart with intent to deceive was dropped by the prosecution.
Grainger's employer, Ernest WensIey, trading as Wensley • Transport of Castleford, was initially charged with causing and permitting Grainger's offences but the prosecution conceded that there was no evidence to support those allegations. The magistrates ordered that 2150 of Wensley's defence costs should be paid out of public funds.
Grainger admitted four offences of failing to make entries on tachograph charts; four offences of failing to operate the mode switch of his tachograph; two offences of exceeding nine hours driving in a day; one offence of driving for more than 4.5 hours without taking the required break, and one offence of failing to take sufficient weekly rest. He was fined 10 per offence.
Defending, Stephen Kirkbright said that the offences fell into two groups: there was the hours offences, and there were the technical tachograph offences which indicated a certain sloppiness on Grainger's part. As far as the weekly rest off ence was concerned, Grainger had finished work on the Friday evening and he did not start again until the Sunday evening, a period of nearly 55 hours.
Unfortunately as a favour he hd gone in on the Saturday morning and driven for 1.5 hours. After that he had had 33 hours 55 minutes continuous rest so he was only one hour five minutes short of the 35 hours rest he was required to take at his home base. He had been open and honest, putting a chart in the tachograph to record the 1.5 hours driving on the Saturday.
In one case, said Kirkbright, where Grainger had driven for 11 hours, he had broken down and been held up for four hours. When he had got within a couple of hours of home he had decided to continue instead of parking up. In the other case of exceeding nine hours driving, Grainger had been over the top by a mere 21 minutes.