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Three-year ban for false charts
Page 33
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A haulier who falsified tachograph records has had his operator's and HGV driving licences revoked — his wile has lost her repute too.
STOKE-ON-TRENT haulier Heath Jukes, who was given a 180-hour community punishment order for falsifying tachograph records (CM6 October). has had his mmpany's 0-licence revoked and he and his company, Heath Jukes Transport, have been disqualified from holding or obtaining a licence for three years.
West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon also decided that Jukes' wife Christine is no longer of good repute as a transport manager and that her repute is unlikely to be regained for 12 months.
Finally, the TC revoked Jukes' HGV driving licence and disqualified him from holding such a licence for two years.
The TC said Jukes had falsified a substantial number of tachograph charts with the purpose of avoiding the restrictions on drivers' hours. Falsification was likely to hide other offences connected with drivers' hours. Each hidden offence was a threat to road safety and represented unfair competition against law abiding hauliers because longer driving hours increased fatigue and reduced a haulier's costs per mile. For that reason, he said, the TCs took a more serious view of falsification than of the offence which it might conceal.
The number of falsifications in one year was the greatest he had ever come across for a onevehicle operation. Jukes had deliberately and knowingly falsified his charts to enable him to do more work than was legal. and to hide this fact from the enforcement authorities.
In this case Jukes was both the operator and the driver, so he alone was responsible, except to the extent that his wife was culpable as the company's transport manager. Such behaviour merited a long period of disqualification for the company and Jukes.
While he could understand the circumstances Christine Jukes was in, he could not condone her failure to exercise effective responsibility as the law required. She had accepted the role of transport manager and must be judged on her performance in that role.
She had failed lamentably to ensure legal and safe operation of the company's vehicle. Her sins might have been of omission rather than commission, but they were sins nevertheless.
Commenting on the fact that Jukes had declined to be interviewed by VOSA officers or to give evidence at the public inquiry, the TC said he would remind both Jukes and his legal representative that a public inquiry was not a court hearing and there was no legal 'right to silence'.
In previous cases similar refusals to give evidence or answer questions had been held by the Transport Tribunal to be a repudiation of the regulatory system, which could in turn be raised as a matter of repute. •