Tacho infringements -hgv drivers

mrbadexample

livalicious wrote: »

He will be needing a solicitor however, his boss (after consulting with his solicitor) has told him to send off his response to the summons (which needs to be done within 7 days of receipt) and plead not guilty. On the basis that the policeman's statement has some discrepancies, and at least 1 infringement is questionable.

Each offence is treated separately, so he can plead not guilty to all, some, or none, as he believes is correct. Remember that there's a discount on the fine for an early guilty plea, so if he's bang to rights on some of the offences, it may not be worth contesting them.

livalicious

He's been to see a solicitor, and he will be charging him £1000 in total!!! Shocking! Is this about right? Obviously he is still deciding whether to use this guy or not. He did say he worked for (or did work for) VOSA before, and also if VOSA checked his tacho rather than the police, he could have quite possibly been let off with a warning as the offences are not that serious!

somech

livalicious wrote: »

He's been to see a solicitor, and he will be charging him £1000 in total!!! Shocking! Is this about right? Obviously he is still deciding whether to use this guy or not. He did say he worked for (or did work for) VOSA before, and also if VOSA checked his tacho rather than the police, he could have quite possibly been let off with a warning as the offences are not that serious!

i find it strange thats it going to court if vosa think its only a minor offence.
i will admit i passed my lgv class c (used to be class 2 )6 years ago and although i dont use it the tacho regs are hugely complicated.
if it were me i would plead guilty and take the punishment then engrave the regs on me forehead;)

livalicious

The solicitor said if VOSA checked the tacho, then quite possibly he would have been let off with only a warning, but because the police checked it, he had to go to court. He said that often happens, when the police check, even if its for minor offences.

I agree, I thought it would be best to just plead guilty, and get a discount on an early guilty plea. But he said he would rather a solicitor defend him and hopefully not get a conviction or get the case thrown out, because there were some errors on the policeman's statement, etc. As for the regs being engraved on his rather large forehead, i will personally see to that

smcaul

I think this is really too difficult to speculate on without knowing the exact nature of the alleged offences.

The CPS/Police could be putting it forward for prosecution for very minor infringements, many of which might not actually exist - digi tachos are not as good as the old wax disc type, they do not display continuous real time data, they only show the data at the sample rates built into the machine, this can lead to some odd things showing up.

livalicious

Now that he has sent off his plea and decided to get a solicitor involved, there is no point me listing the infringements on here now, his mind has been made up. But thanks everyone for your help anyway.

somech

no probs hope it goes well for you both