Confusion over when to use the tachograph card results in fine and licence suspension
Drivers’ hours and tachograph offences committed by Redditch-based Mark Clarke, and his drivers, resulted in his two-vehicle O-Licence and his vocational driving licence being suspended for eight weeks by Traffic Commissioner (TC) Nick Denton.
The TC also disqualified him from acting as a Transport Manager (TM) until he attends a two-day TM’s refresher training course.
In March Mr Clarke pleaded guilty at Birmingham Magistrates to three offences of driving without a tachograph card inserted, one of taking insufficient break and one of taking insufficient weekly rest in September, being fined a total of £879.
The TC said that the Traffic Examiner had reported a series of drivers’ hours offences. A lot of the driving without a card offences had taken place when driving had been under the domestic hours rules. However, there were instances when school work was not being carried out.
Asked about the convictions, Mr Clarke said that on the first occasion he had taken the card out after 4.5 hours driving and driven for 38 minutes to get home. “It was a moment of madness as I know that it is wrong,” he said.
On the second occasion he had taken a party to Brighton and the following morning he and his girlfriend had gone sightseeing without putting the card in the tachograph.
On the third occasion he had thought he did not need to put the card in for a school run before doing an airport run. He panicked when the passengers were late, and he did not insert the card until arriving at the airport.
He had initially always put the card in for school runs but when attending a new operator’s seminar, he heard that he didn’t need to but didn’t hear that he still needed to keep a record. He now used the card for all his driving. The last three years had been very stressful because of other matters.
What had occurred had brought his focus back on to the business and he now had a new system in place for managing drivers’ hours.
In reply to the TC he said that he had obtained a company card in October 2018. He was aware he needed to download data and did not know why he had not been doing it for around 15 months.
The TC said that there were instances of drivers, including Mr Clarke, not taking qualified breaks, drivers putting their card in the wrong slot, and of other drivers not putting a card in, not only on school runs. Some 99% of driver defect reports showed no defects. “Drivers are dragging you down into the abyss,” he told Mr Clarke.
Mr Clarke said that he was blindingly aware of the problems and working to eliminate them.
The TC said that there were strong arguments for revoking the licence. However, he took account that Mr Clarke had been frank about his failings and he accepted there had been some confusion over school runs. However, Mr Clarke could not bear any repetition.
