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Sanmar wins absolute discharge
Page 28
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• Normantonbased Sanmar Container Services has been given an absolute discharge by Ilarrogate Magistrates after being charged with using a vehicle with dangerous parts. This followed an incident where a Sanmar artic lost a pair of trailer wheels on the Great North Road.
The court was told that a police officer found a Mercedes artic, belonging to the company, stationary on the hard shoulder of the Al at Marton cum Grafton. The twin nearside wheels on the rear trailer axle were missing. One of the wheels had hit a Volvo truck, parked on a filling station next to the Al. When the wheels were recovered, the damage to the wheels and studs was said to indicate that the wheelnuts had not been sufficiently tight.
Consultant engineer Ivan Ratcliffe said it was impossible to say whether the wheels had been lost due to a stud failure T through the wheelnitts unwinding. In his opinion, the circumstances of the wheel detachment were synonymous with what had become known as the "lost wheels mystery", and resulted from engineering problems rather than any lack of maintenance.
Ratcliffe thought that this might be because it was the nearside wheels that ran into the kerb. Wheelnut design had not changed in the past 20 years, but operating speeds had considerably increased. If a single stud failed, or a wheelnut became loose, there was a domino effect leading to rapid detachment, he added.
The driver of the vehicle subsequently admitted that he had not checked the wheelnuts on the day in question, despite a sticker in the cab of his vehicle reminding him to check the wheelnuts daily.
Defending, Gary Hodgson referred the court to the High Court decision in the case of Hart vs Bex which found that an absolute discharge was appropriate where defendants had not been negligent, and were morally blameless.