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Ignorance of rules no excuse
Page 23
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Senior Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts has blasted drivers who feign ignorance of the rules governing them in order to deceive the authorities.
His comments came as he suspended the HGV driving licence of Graham Wardrop, a driver employed by Chesterle-Street-based Co-operative Group (C'S) for six weeks because of failures to take enough weekly rest. He also Issued formal warnings to two other company drivers, John Ericson and Alexander McLaughlin.
However, he decided to take no action against the company's Scottish Operator's Licence other than to issue a warning at the Glasgow disciplinary inquiry.
The inquiry heard that an investigation commenced after the Vehicle Inspectorate received a complaint that tachograph charts submitted by drivers showed they were falsifying their weekly rest. It was then found that four drivers had not been taking the required weekly rest, although one of these was simply in error.
The TC said that they had been putting rest on the tachograph charts when they were at work and that would have deceived an enforce ment officer at the roadside. They had feigned ignorance of the rules, saying that they thought the rules did not apply on private ground.
The rules had been in place and were unchanged since 1985, said the TC, who added that he could not see why professional drivers would be ignorant of them.
He said he was "getting very fed up with drivers feigning ignorance of the rules".
These drivers held Class 1 licences, which were their membership to -the big wheelers' ckib".
He accepted that there was no sign of coercion but the offences were repeated four times by each of the accused drivers. One driver had taken only 36 hours' rest and another only 241,4, 28,28 and 26 hours.