Chris McClellan- Justice for Drivers:
What is Justice For Drivers? . Allow me to explain:
Justice for Drivers is a campaign that has been set up in order to highlight and to compel changes to present legislation which holds a driver responsible for the contents of every item that is loaded onto his/her vehicle, which effectively makes him/her responsible for actions that are carried out by others and over which he/she has no control, i.e. the contents, packaging and labelling of items loaded.
Some of you may, but the majority of you won’t be aware that it is a lorry driver’s responsibility to know the exact contents of every package that comprises the load that is on his/her vehicle, which in practise is practically impossible to achieve.
Add to this that the European Court of Justice has recently ruled that drivers are responsible for the taxes due on any contraband found within a load whether or not he/she had any previous knowledge of said contraband or not, one must begin to realise that some thing needs to be done about this situation, to these ends we have started a petition which can also be found online at www.justicefordrivers.org which will eventually be presented to the pertinent European authorities along with the request/demand that we have a set of rules throughout the whole of the EU that will afford us some kind of protection.
The comparable situation in everyday life would be if your postman, while on his rounds, was stopped by the Police, and there was a package found amidst the mail that he is in the process of delivering, and this package was found to contain drugs… should he be treated to the same rules that truck drivers are, then he would be locked up as a drugs trafficker. He didn’t send the package, he can’t open the package, he is not connected with the sender/receiver, and he is just the carrier, no different than the driver of the truck.
If stopped in France a driver will be charged with transportation of illegal substances or merchandise, a charge against which under present legislation he has no defence, none, after all, he has evidently driven the vehicle and no distinction is provided for under present French law for “with” or “with out” knowledge, he will then automatically be imprisoned awaiting trial a process, which in France that can take as long as two years, and eventually will receive a jail sentence along with an extremely high customs fine which can reach 400,00 Euros.
We consider these laws to be unjust and we are mounting a petition to try and get them changed.
To achieve these aims we need your support, not monetary, just support.
Your signature will cost you nothing except web time.
To sign the On-line Petition, click on the website justicefordrivers.org , you will find The Petition on the right of the screen below the banner heading
