Fatigued truckie caught doing 25-hour hauls
by Roger Kirkwood, CVIU Intel Analyst, Rangiora
A truck driver working two jobs, driving 45-tonne trucks continuously for up to 25 hours was recently caught by the Police Commercial Vehicle Investigation Unit (CVIU), prosecuted and convicted.
Senior Constable Scott Johnston, Motueka CVIU, says 45-year-old Wakefield driver Peter Leslie McRae was using separate logbooks for each employer to hide his punishing schedule. This kept him behind the wheel for up to 25 hours without rest, posing a great danger to him and other road users.
“Fatigue is well documented as a significant contributing factor in a lot of crashes,” says Scott. “Fatigue on this scale is highly dangerous, and a split-second loss of concentration could have disastrous results.”
The judge agreed, ordering McRae to pay more than $15,000 in fines and court costs, and disqualifying him from driving heavy and passenger vehicles for 15 months.
When passing sentence on the 36 logbook charges in Nelson District Court, Judge Tony Zohrab said McRae’s offending was “as bad as it gets,” adding it would have taken just a moment’s inattention at the wheel of a fully laden four-axle truck-and-trailer unit for him to have “wiped out” a member of the public.
Scott says McRae had a regular job driving logging trucks around Nelson, recording early starts in his logbook and full days of driving, ending
around 4pm.
Senior Constable Scott Johnston, Motueka CVIU. The story above outlines the risks some truckies will take and where fatigue poses a real danger to other road users and themselves. |
“Then, usually on Friday nights, he’d start his casual job driving line-haul trucks to Christchurch and back under a second logbook. Sometimes there would only be a quarter of an hour between leaving one truck and jumping into the next one. On the trip to Christchurch there wasn’t time for a rest either. He’d unload in Christchurch, load up again and head straight back,” says Scott.
Offending on this scale is something the transport industry doesn’t often catch.
Both companies had systems in place to manage driving hours, requiring drivers to hand in logbook pages, but they had no way of knowing a driver was working for two employers simultaneously.
It’s only when a Police enquiry combines company records that the jigsaw puzzle locks together.
Scott hopes this case sends out a timely message that Police and the Courts won’t accept this type of behaviour.
“Even people in the transport industry were shocked when they heard the level of driving hours involved. It takes a lot of getting through to these guys that it could be a driver’s wife or family who gets taken out as a result of fatigue – not just themselves.”
