bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38404875
Boss and mechanic guilty
Driver cleared of all charges
don’t understand how the driver was cleared on the charges though,he must have done his checks in the morning but apparently said to the court he had no idea of the condition of the truck,still if he has a conscience he will have to live with the deaths for the rest of his life,and that ain’t a nice thought
Driver being cleared was the right decision, too young and inexperienced to really know whether the brakes were defective or not, he wouldnt have been able to compare with anything else…
I’ve bought this up on the subject of VOSA checks and PG9’s being handed out:-
What if the major thing wrong with the vehicle was something that isn’t likely to be picked up by a "cursory walkaround check but SHOULD have been picked up by the last official service/MOT.…?
Things like “Structural Weakness” or “wheel nuts at wrong torque” or “out-of sight mechanical faults” etc. etc. You catching my drift here?
If the Brakes were ‘about’ to fail, but that fact was not obvious from what could reasonably be expected of a driver to “find”, then yes - it makes sense that the firm and the mechanic get the bullet - but not the driver.
Perhaps the reign of terror where “everything is the drivers fault, especicially if agency” has finally come to an end. 
Message received. I do believe the Jury has got it right here. 
I also fully agree with the jury decision
Correct me if im wrong, but was the truck supposed to have been driven along that road?
truckman020:
don’t understand how the driver was cleared on the charges though,he must have done his checks in the morning but apparently said to the court he had no idea of the condition of the truck,still if he has a conscience he will have to live with the deaths for the rest of his life,and that ain’t a nice thought
You can’t assess the condition of the braking system on a walkaround check. I am sure that the incident will haunt him for the rest of his life but I don’t think he had culpability for the incident and I think the jury delivered exactly the right verdict in all three cases.
Does anyone know what was actually wrong with the brakes? Articles just say they were defective? And what would a driver experienced or inexperienced have noticed on the checks that would have given them an indication of the defect?
Apart from his air pressures and warnings in the cab what should he have actually seen that an experienced driver may have picked up on?
The walk around check does not require a driver to crawl underneath a truck and carry out a safety inspection while lying on your back or use a crawl board .
The Dvsa advice is quite simple, walk around to check for obvious defects .
Can you imagine getting under an artic in the rain, in an urine soaked Msa parking at 3am .
In the local Bbc news, the presenter asked a Rha spokesperson, where were the Dvsa with this firm .
The firm was on the radar for non compliance , the Dvsa are also to blame .
If you can remember back all those years to when we were green, we got sent out in some right bloody old clobber, i once complained about the brakes snatching left on me first artic a mickey mouse Foden, the fleet engineer took a long drag on his pipe and pronounced in broad Norfolk…‘that’s quite normal for this type of vehicle’'…which i knew then and we all know was complete ■■■■■■■■ and was eventually cured by fitting new brake shoes, but as a greenhorn i was in no position to argue, just as this young lad was in no position to judge the braking performance of his lorry until he’d got a few thousand successful miles under his belt.
The first few months are a dangerous time, and employers need to make sure everything is as up to scratch as it can be for inexperienced new drivers.
A properly trained driver, taught from the first time they ventured into a lorry to forget that brakes to slow gears to go cobblers they learned whilst learning to drive a small 1 ton car, might have resulted in a different scenario from the tragedy, but the young driver couldn’t possibly know that, indeed at some blue chip type operations he might well have failed an assessment had he driven old school utilising gears and engine/exhaust braking continually in order to save wear and excess heat on the brakes, so the whole system of training and ongoing lorry use is unfit in this aspect, that’s an old fashioned view maybe but one i know is shared by many experienced drivers here…i wonder how many have wondered since this happened the same as i have, in that had an experienced hand been at the wheel that day, starting at the top of the hill in an appropriate gear and only using the brakes minimally just to prevent overrevving, that the day could have been saved.
Course the lorry should have had a working exhaust brake too, but again the young lad couldn’t possibly know how much difference it would make, and ironically unless driven old school, low gear high revs for max retardation, the exhauster would make little more effort than a pleasant noise in a high gear relying on brakes alone.
A tragedy all round, whatever the outcome for the operator and mechanic, i too am satisfied that the young driver had to be found not guilty, let down by a driver training system and operator both deficient.
And that is a seriously good reflective statement Juddian.
Well said.
I think this verdict has highlighted that the current training and testing regime simply is not good enough.
Vehicles need to be fully loaded - how else does the driver know what proper brakes are like at full weight. They need to encounter steep hills and be taken through exhaust brakes and using the gearbox. I meet so many newish drivers don’t know what the blue band on the rev counter is for.
Maybe we also need a minimum number of hours completed before the test?
More education about ‘O’ licence standards and what is good and what is bad would also help.
But to comment on What Juddian has posted - I agree but had the vehicle been correctly maintained as per ‘O’ licence requirements and by a decent operator with morals - the current driving style taught would be OK
Was the owner in collusion with the fitter to falsify the maintenance records, or was it that he knowingly sent the vehicle out with a problem?
Juddian:
If you can remember back all those years to when we were green, we got sent out in some right bloody old clobber, i once complained about the brakes snatching left on me first artic a mickey mouse Foden, the fleet engineer took a long drag on his pipe and pronounced in broad Norfolk…‘that’s quite normal for this type of vehicle’'…which i knew then and we all know was complete ■■■■■■■■ and was eventually cured by fitting new brake shoes, but as a greenhorn i was in no position to argue, just as this young lad was in no position to judge the braking performance of his lorry until he’d got a few thousand successful miles under his belt.The first few months are a dangerous time, and employers need to make sure everything is as up to scratch as it can be for inexperienced new drivers.
Similar here, at 21years old was given a Ford D series 2817, the brakes were either on fully or off, there was nothing in between, complained only to be told as you were thats how they are. Uncoupled the trailer and came to a T junction on a wet road, all the wheels locked up sending me sideways across the junction into a passing car. No one was hurt and damage minimal as it was only a slow speed shunt but the p.o.s was in the worshop the very next day having the brakes done 
AndrewG:
Juddian:
If you can remember back all those years to when we were green, we got sent out in some right bloody old clobber, i once complained about the brakes snatching left on me first artic a mickey mouse Foden, the fleet engineer took a long drag on his pipe and pronounced in broad Norfolk…‘that’s quite normal for this type of vehicle’'…which i knew then and we all know was complete ■■■■■■■■ and was eventually cured by fitting new brake shoes, but as a greenhorn i was in no position to argue, just as this young lad was in no position to judge the braking performance of his lorry until he’d got a few thousand successful miles under his belt.The first few months are a dangerous time, and employers need to make sure everything is as up to scratch as it can be for inexperienced new drivers.
Similar here, at 21years old was given a Ford D series 2817, the brakes were either on fully or off, there was nothing in between, complained only to be told as you were thats how they are. Uncoupled the trailer and came to a T junction on a wet road, all the wheels locked up sending me sideways across the junction into a passing car. No one was hurt and damage minimal as it was only a slow speed shunt but the p.o.s was in the worshop the very next day having the brakes done
30 plus years ago I used to get hoodwinked into being stupidly overloaded “dinnae worry yer self lad - everybody does it”!
As for the court case; really pleased the young lad got off. Anyone that age with that little experience should be read the riot act every morning to make sure they are driving with the seriousness the job requires - not told by the boss to follow me and keep up. Nice to see a boss taking the blame, too often managers push drivers too hard then wash their hands of all responsibility when things go pear shaped.
On the subject of a driver checking brakes, I was driving buses many years ago in Brisbane. I was out in a Leyland Panther. I’d checked the brakes in the yard, empty of course and they seemed ok. I soon had a full standing load and obviously couldn’t do another check, but it was pulling up normally. I was following another bus when the female driver was cut off by an idiot in a car. She stood on the brakes and even though I was a sensible distance behind her, I ran up the back of the bus because there wasn’t much braking effort. In those days, the tanks had to be drained daily and this one was found to have not been done for so long that the amount of water in there was so much that there wasn’t enough volume of air for a full brake application. The point is that I still got fined and points on my Licence. Hopefully things are changing now instead of automatically blaming the driver.
I’m a bus driver.
Our defect cards have a list of things to check on the front, and on the back is where you record any defects.
99% of drivers write ‘none’ on the back.
I write ‘none found’, if there are no defects.
VOSA told me that they haul you over the coals if the defect is ‘driver detectable’.
Rowley010:
Does anyone know what was actually wrong with the brakes? Articles just say they were defective? And what would a driver experienced or inexperienced have noticed on the checks that would have given them an indication of the defect?Apart from his air pressures and warnings in the cab what should he have actually seen that an experienced driver may have picked up on?
The primary thrust of the prosecution technical case was the reaction brackets on the automatic slack adjusters had snapped therefore preventing them adjusting automatically. As the brake material wears the slack adjusters adjust automatically and take up that slack to make sure the shoes remain close to the drum and also the slack adjuster remains at an angle to the brake chamber push rod that ensures maximum torque on the s cam.
That’s sort if it. However, the figures for how much out of adjustment they were weren’t really that much and not really what ought to lead to catastrophic failure.
According to eye witnesses there was smoke and a very strong smell of burnt brakes that the driver presumably missed. I would suspect that there were almost certainly signs of brake fade before he turned into the hill ie the truck seeming to roll on and coming to a ‘soft’ stop. In terms of drum brakes out of adjustment they tend to be quite ‘clunky’ and there maybe a noticeable delay between pushing the pedal and the shoes hitting the drum.
Maximum use of engine braking by running down the gears combined with use of the exhaust brake and good forward planning that avoids last minute heavy braking help prevents brakes overheating.
shep532:
I think the current training and testing regime simply is not good enough.But to comment on What Juddian has posted - the current driving style taught would be OK
I think you’ve contradicted yourself.Like mine I’m sure that Juddian’s point is the training regime having removed the idea of using gears and thereby engine braking to slow at all times to minimise brake temperatures and maximise reserve heat capacity.All historically based on flawed brakes to slow gears to go block change downshifts police car driving practice which has the potential to cook car brakes let alone heavy truck ones.Bearing in mind that I’ve posted elsewhere evidence taken from Commercial Motor archives going back to 1968 of said police driving instruction method being suggested then for use with trucks.All seemingly based on the idea that drivers don’t have the ability to match road and engine speeds correctly during downshifts,so instead let’s rely on the brakes and just put it into the gear we’ll need to drive away with when we’ve slowed it down on the brakes to the required speed.
Phillip Potter was following his boss down the lane of the accident.
The boss would have known the sign to warn of restrictions.
Potter had never driven on that road in his whole life .
As admitted on a tv interview .
The boss knew the sign was down.
I can imagine the conversation that day “Follow me Phill, I know a short cut .”
Short cut to save time/money and fuel .
Tipper and bulk tipper firms need to be investigated for the drivers pay structure.
Where the drivers earn more, if they do more, which makes some bad drivers taking risks to get more loads done .
I thought bonus incentive schemes were illegal but apparently they get around it, on how they word the contract .