Cross-loaded dead driver pleads guilt)
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A driver whose truck shed its load of logs, killing an elderly couple in a passing car, has pleaded guilty to driving with an insecure load which was above the legal weight limit.
The accident, on the Al south of Langholm in Scotland last year, sparked a wave of protest against cross-loading, In which logs are piled at right angles to the road on flatbeds.
Andrew Allison was working for Selkirk-based forestry contractor Elliot Henderson. The company has pleaded not guilty to causing and permitting Allison to deliver the load insecurely and overweight. A hearing is scheduled at Dumfries Sheriff's Court on 13 November.
The Transport Research Laboratory is about to launch a three-month programme of tests to establish whether standards for cross-loading drawn up by the Round Wood Haulage Working Party need to be revised. These tests are expected to cost more than £50,000, but some insiders have doubts that they will go far enough.
Alistair Baxter, managing director of Midlothian-based James Baxter & Sons, who is the haulier representative on the working party, says there is an increased danger from timber loads placed longitu nally on flatbeds. He points r that the 44-tonne limit mea loads can be a metre high than before. The trailer will more unstable with the ext height than with cross-load timber," he warns.
But HSE principal inspec1 Edward Marshall, who Bait with the forestry indust says the research has to co centrate on the security cross-loaded timber: "I inevitable in any research pr ject that someone will come with other questions th there won't be answers to."
The results will not available until next year.