An employer has been put under investigation following the case of a driver who killed two charity cyclists in Cornwall. The driver was sentenced to eight and a half years, but safety experts and other people affected were puzzled that no direct action was taken against his employer at the time.
However, according to a short report published on October 27th by FleetNews, the company (Frys Logistics) has now been fined for tachograph offences unearthed by the on-going investigation.
Tachographs were seized from the company at the request of the Devon & Cornwall Police’s Serious Collisions Investigations Unit: they discovered that Mark Fry, owner and operator of Frys Logistics, had failed to record the walk-around checks of a vehicle he was due to drive, as well as office and maintenance work carried out (a legal requirement).
On June 3rd he had also been on duty for 15 hours and 49 minutes, which would not have left him with enough time to take the mandatory nine-hour rest break required within each 24-hour period.
According to the head of the bench, "This was an omission rather than a deliberate effort to falsify but you work in the industry and understand the rules of the industry." Fry had made a "common mistake" in failing to record the other things he was doing at work on the days he was driving. There was "no deliberate falsification", he simply should have kept a manual log and didn't, the court heard.
