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Nuts became loose fast
Page 29
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• It is possible for wheelnuts to become loose very rapidly, and certainly within a distance of 70km after being checked by a driver, consultant engineer Ivan Ratcliffe told Morley Magistrates. Triffitts Coals, trading as J S Whittaker & Son, of Shipley, and one of the company's drivers, admitted using an artic tractor unit in a dangerous condition following a wheel loss incident, The court heard that on Monday 13 November, the rear nearside inner and outer wheels of an articulated tractor, driven on the A650 Bradford Road by Blair Hazelwood, became detatched. The wheelnuts had become completely unwound from the studs. In the view of a police vehicle examiner, they had been insufficiently tightened.
John Rae, a fitter employed by the company, said he had
.4 6
changed both sets of drive axle wheels two days earlier. He had tightened the nuts with a bar before fitting them with plastic caps which had arrows which pointed to the centre of the hub. The driver could then see by the position Of the arrows if the nuts were moving.
Director David Rae said that whenever wheels had been removed the driver was instructed to check the wheelnuts at the end of the first working day, or the following morning, and then to carry out visual checks throughout the next day.
Hazelwood said that he had checked the wheels when he collected the vehicle on the Monday morning. He had travelled from Bailden to Lancaster and Settle, dropping a load and reloading.
He had travelled 261km and about 70km after reloading, before the wheels came off without any warning.
Ratcliffe said that none of the studs were fractured. In his opinion the wheelnuts were not loose when Hazelwood set off that day, otherwise the detachment would have occurred earlier. In his view the slackening had occurred in the last 70km, It was down to a design fault. Once tight, properly designed wheelnuts should remain tight and drivers should not need to have to check them continually.
Defending, Gary Hodgson . said that neither the company nor the driver had been negligent. Hazelwood had not known, and had not had any reasonable cause to suspect, that there was any problem with the wheels.
The magistrates gave both the company and Hazelwood an absolute discharge and decided that there were special reasons for not endorsing Hazelwood's driving licence.