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New route optimisation technology for fleets operating in urban areas, based on the behaviour of ants, has been developed by university researchers.

Computer scientists, at the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Aston University in Birmingham, say it could help fleets halve their emissions, while helping towns and cities meet clean air targets.

The researchers based their computer modelling algorithm on the way ants forage for food to schedule tasks to vehicles in a fleet and optimise their routes.

Developed under the Think Beyond Data initiative, part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the research team used a technique known as ‘meta-heuristic technology’.

The method mimics how colonies of ants solve problems and improves upon their existing behaviours. For example, each ant keeps a record of the best solution it has individually found and passes on this knowledge to other ants. This ‘best practice’ then permeates through-out the colony, updating its store of know-how in a way comparable to computer algorithms.

The researchers further developed the technique by creating even ‘smarter’ ant algorithms by reducing the amount of decisions they make such that they can solve city-scale fleet routing problems. 

Dr Darren Chitty, lead researcher at Aston University, explained: “Algorithms based on the foraging behaviour of ants have long been used to solve vehicle routing problems, but now we have found how to scale these up to city-size fleets operating over several weeks in much less time than before.

“It means much larger fleet optimisation problems can be tackled within reasonable timescales using software a user can put on their laptop.”

The route optimisation technology was tested on several Birmingham companies that operate fleets of vehicles to help them minimise their road usage.

Tests with the maintenance company comprised of up to 45 vehicles and 437 customer jobs over a six-week period.

They observed savings of more than 50% over the company’s original time spent on the road. This enabled the maintenance company to make equivalent savings in their fuel costs, boost profit margins, while cutting vehicle emissions in half, said researchers.

Dr Chitty said: “We feel that while Clean Air Zones will improve air quality for some residents, there could be better ways to tackle the health and environmental problems caused by emissions. Instead of taxing commercial vehicles to enter these zones, our research can act as an incentive to companies as they will not only reduce emissions but also save money.

“If all companies in a city operated with this technology, then emissions from these vehicles – which are some of the most polluting – could be significantly reduced, improving air quality for all concerned.”

Many fleets already employ telematics and tracking software to optimise route planning and improve driver behaviour, but these results suggest the scope for cost savings and improved environmental performance.

For example, the scientists were able to reduce CO2 emissions by 4.25 kg per van per day and reduce more harmful emissions such as nitrous oxide by 98-grams per van per day from a fleet of vehicles tested in Birmingham.

The improved schedules were able to service all the required customer demand but with fewer vehicles. This came as a direct result of better routing, saving time for the fleet, but also taking some vehicles off the road altogether, reducing traffic and congestion, said the researchers.

They are now looking to roll out the technology further by testing the system with different types of vehicle fleets such as larger vans or HGVs, as well as larger fleets of vehicles.

The team will continue to approach other companies to use as a testbed for the technology as the project is funded for another two years.  By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

Highways England will increase the basic speed at which motorists can drive through roadworks to 60mph.

After extensive research and trials, the organisation has confirmed that where it is safe for road users and roadworkers, and where shown on road signs, vehicles can be driven at up to 60mph.

That is 10mph faster than the current 50mph limit.

The move comes in response to feedback from road users who said they were frustrated at not being able to go quicker. The trials showed that as well as saving time, more people were sticking to the higher speed limit bringing safety benefits.

Jim O’Sullivan, Highways England chief executive, said: “All of our research shows that road users benefit from 60mph limits in roadworks. They have shorter journey times and feel safe.

“Road users understand that roadworks are necessary, but they are frustrated by them. So testing 60mph has been about challenging the norm while ensuring the safety of our people working out there and those using our roads.

“We have a huge programme of work planned, so being able to use 60mph where safe will continue to improve everybody’s experience of our roads.”

Highways England recently completed delivery of the Government’s first road investment programme. It was found to have delivered most of its commitments and to have made good progress over the first road period, but the programme set out for major improvements was too optimistic, according to latest Office of Rail and Road (ORR) report.

The ORR had made observations on the delivery risk of the programme which saw re-planning from 112 schemes that were due to have started construction in the first road period to 73, agreed with the Department for Transport (DfT). By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is being investigated for potential emissions cheating by authorities.

The car maker’s offices, including those of truck maker CNH, in Germany, Switzerland and Italy were raided following claims that some of the company’s engines produced illegal levels of emissions.

Potentially illegal software was allegedly detected in Multijet diesel engines used in Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Fiat cars, plus Iveco and Fiat commercial vehicles.

Prosecuters claim that more than 200,000 vehicles could be affected in Germany alone.

Affected engines include Euro 5 and 6 variants of the 1.3-litre, 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre Multijet diesel engine.

A statement from Eurojust, a European Union agency for criminal cooperation across member states, said: “Defeat devices are illegal according to the European Union regulations in place. Vehicles with defeat devices are not approved for road usage in the EU and consumers with such devices installed in their cars face possible driving bans.”

The probe is said to be looking into a “number of people” who may have been involved in allegedly allowing use of the devices.

An FCA spokesman confirmed that a number of the company’s offices in Europe were visited by investigators in the context of a request for assistance by magistrates in Germany. The spokesman said the business is cooperating fully with authorities.

FCA and CNH Industrial are both controlled by Exor, the holding company of Italy’s Agnelli family.

Renault and Nissan were recently accused of emissions cheating following allegations made against Mercedes-Benz.  By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

As we move from lockdown to a relaxing of the rules around travelling, office working and social distancing, what will be the long-term impact on business transport and travel?

There are some short-term implications, including a reluctance to use shared services, from car share to public transport, and far less road travel due to people working from home (note – while Department for Transport stats show daily traffic levels now rising again, the peak congestion times remain way below usual levels, indicating new reasons for travelling during the day).

Local authorities are spotting an opportunity to consolidate new active behaviours with pop-up cycle lanes and wider pavements, but, ultimately, what does all this mean for fleets?

Many businesses are now considering new agile working practices which will allow their staff to work more often from home. Their need to commute will reduce, but will this change their need for a car?

I don’t think so. If you work in the city, chances are you commute on public transport; and if not now, you may not have a choice in the future as congestion charging and workplace charging schemes accelerate across major conurbations. But you will still need a car for leisure purposes, and, maybe, the occasional business trip.

Would you rent or join a subscription scheme? Possibly, and there are plenty now on offer. But they don’t offer ‘drop-of-a-hat’ access; you have to plan ahead. And the emergence of electric vehicles arguably knocks all of this into a cocked hat.

This year, a company car driver will pay no taxfor a pure electric car. Next year, they will pay 1% benefit-in-kind tax – or £60 a year on a £30,000 car – and for each of the three years after that, they’ll pay £120 for same car.

Show me the subscription scheme that can compete with that price.

Employee demand for company cars will remain. It might drop slightly, but it might even rise as cash takers wake up to the savings. And this is supported by Fleet Intelligence research which shows fleet sizes will, on balance, increase, with much of the growth driven by electric cars.  By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

Fleets and private motorists are being warned about an increased risk of drug driving as employees return to work from furlough.

The warning, from a major supplier of drug driver testing equipment, comes as figures from the police show how drug driving is becoming more prevalent than drink driving.

D.tec International, which supplies the ‘DrugWipe’ roadside test kits to every police force in England, Wales and Scotland, says the figures are “shocking”.

During the first six months of the year, the combined number of drug drive arrests for three police forces was 50% higher than those for drink driving.

In Essex, there were 1,323 arrests for drug driving, more than double the number of those for drink driving (647).

In Merseyside, it was the same story, with 1,121 drug drive arrests and 570 for drink driving. But in West Yorkshire, the figures for drink and drug driving, while still high, were on a similar level, with 1,235 drug driving arrests and 1,178 for drink driving.

Police forces started reporting arrests for drug driving had surpassed drink-driving for the first time, last year.

Ean Lewin, managing director of D.tec International, said: “I know I have been going on about the magnitude of drug drive versus drink drive for a number of years, but even I am shocked by the recent arrest figures for the first half of 2020.

“During the last few months during lockdown, it got even worse.”

In 2019, Merseyside became the first force to record more than 2,000 annual drug drive arrests – and there were more than a dozen forces with more or equivalent drug drive arrests, compared to those for drink driving.

Looking specifically at the lockdown period alone, in April and May 2020 Essex Police recorded two-and-a-half to three times more drug drive arrests, compared to drink drive.

Lewin continued: “The issue is that companies are bringing back these employees from furlough and simply not looking at the drug and alcohol issues that have been created.

“The EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) has been looking at this issue during the lock down period, and in an extensive report says that ‘those who use drink or drugs are now using more’.”

Furthermore, Lewin says he has heard of companies seeing employees coming back to work who have “needed a crutch” in the form of alcohol or drugs during lockdown – and are now asking for help to deal with the issue.

Four out of five respondents to a Fleet News poll said drug-driving had become such a safety issue for fleets that they think employers should be routinely testing company car and van drivers.

At the time, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead for roads policing, chief constable Anthony Bangham, said he was “concerned” to see the increase in the number of motorists testing positive for drugs.

He told Fleet News public perception of the issue needs to change.

“Drink driving is considered socially unacceptable by the vast majority of the public, yet the emergence of drug-driving is perhaps not yet seen in the same way,” he said. By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

It is now felt that whilst the ban will initially relate just to commercial and large passenger carrying vehicles it won’t be long before the legislation will spread to cars.

Tyres aged ten years and older will be banned from lorries, buses and coaches on roads in England, Scotland and Wales in a boost to road safety.

The ban follows an investigation, including research commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT), which indicated ageing tyres suffer corrosion which could cause them to fail.

It will be illegal to fit tyres aged ten years or older to the front wheels of lorries, buses and coaches, and all wheels of minibuses, under the new rules.

The secondary legislation will be laid in the autumn and will also apply to re-treaded tyres – with the date of re-treading to be marked – making the age of the tyre clearly visible.

Roads Minister Baroness Vere said: “In the same way that you wouldn’t drive a car with faulty brakes, ensuring your tyres are fit for purpose is crucial in making every journey safer.

“Taking this step will give drivers across the country confidence their lorries, buses and coaches are truly fit for use – a safety boost for road users everywhere.

“This change is in no small way the result of years of campaigning, particularly from Frances Molloy, to whom I thank and pay tribute.”

Frances Molloy’s son Michael died in a coach crash, where the vehicle had a 19-year-old tyre fitted to the front axle of a coach in 2012. Since the accident, Molloy has campaigned to see the law changed.

Drivers, owners and operators are responsible for the safety of their vehicles –this will also now include ensuring their vehicle’s tyres meet the new requirements.

The DVSA will continue checking tyre age as part of their routine roadside enforcement activities, and adding an additional assessment to the Annual Test scheme (MOT test). By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

The average electric vehicle (EV) driver spends £310 per year on electricity to charge it at home, according to a new study by Uswitch.

The energy comparison service calculated the cost based on a typical EV covering 10,000 miles per year at the UK’s average electricity price per kWh.

It also calculated the cost of charging an EV in different countries around the world, based on the average price and mileage in those territories.

The UK ranked as the 10^th most expensive out of 50 countries in the study, with the most expensive country to charge an electric vehicle revealed as Denmark, followed by Germany and Belgium.

Average annual EV charging cost:

Country	Annual Charging Cost Per Person
Denmark	£486.59
Germany	£412.87
Belgium	£398.12
Italy	£383.37
Ireland	£383.37
Portugal	£353.88
Spain	£339.14
Austria	£324.39
Japan	£324.39
United Kingdom	£309.65

Sarah Broomfield, energy expert at Uswitch, said: “The use of electric vehicles has clear environmental benefits but for many consumers, the choice to move to EVs can be hindered by perceptions about how much it will cost to charge.

“This research shows that, while the costs are not insignificant, the UK is in a strong position compared to countries like Denmark where the price of electricity makes the cost of a charge so much higher.

“Of course, as well as the cost savings of rapid charging points, we also encourage consumers to regularly review their own energy tariffs to ensure they’re getting the best deal possible.”

The current advisory fuel rate (AFR) for an alternative fuel vehicle is 4ppm, meaning drivers can claim £400 for every 10,000 business miles covered. By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

The potentially enormous safety benefits of self-driving vehicles have long been considered to be among the technology’s biggest assets.

Numerous research projects have found human error is a contributing factor in between 85% and 95% of current road collisions.

The conventional thinking has been that if you remove human error through the use of fully autonomous technology, then the collision rate would fall by a similar amount.

This has been a strong selling point for self-driving vehicles to a public which, so far, seems unwilling to trust the technology.

For example, research conducted last year on behalf of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers found 60% of people said they would always prefer to drive themselves rather than use a self-driving vehicle, while two-thirds of people are uncomfortable with the idea of travelling in a driverless car.

Part of this could be down to unfamiliarity with a technology which is still being trialled and developed, and is many years away from being a common sight on the roads.

But the way the mainstream media overlooks the many hundreds of thousands of incident-free miles travelled in self-driving vehicle trials around the world while sensationally covering collisions also has an impact, argue autonomous vehicle (AV) advocates.

“The headlines go ‘whoosh’ (if there is a collision),” Ben Boutcher-West, head of mobility at kerbside management company AppyWay, told a Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum conference on autonomous transport in the UK.

“The way the media handles some of those events make it very difficult for any OEM to put their name forward and push out a service.

“It’s the way they (driverless cars) are perceived. That for me is all about media and education and the moment these vehicles put a foot wrong, they will be battered like crazy by people who maybe don’t understand the full situation of what actually occurred.”

A study released in America this month by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS – see panel below), found the perceived safety benefits of AVs could be significantly lower than commonly believed by the wider AV sector.

It claimed self-driving vehicles might prevent only one-third of crashes if automated systems drive too much like people.

“It is likely that fully self-driving cars will identify hazards better than people,” says Jessica Cichone, vice-president for research at IIHS and a co-author of the study. “But we found this alone would not prevent the bulk of crashes.”

The study was criticised by companies and organisations working on self-driving vehicles who argue that it underestimates the technology’s capabilities.

No mistakes can be made

However, any negative publicity can reinforce opposition to the technology and Brian Wong, director at specialist transport law firm Burges Salmon, warns: “If the societal acceptance (of self-driving vehicles) is going to change, then nobody, and least of all the connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) industry, can really afford for mistakes to be made.”

This places extra importance on the success of AV trials, a number of which have already been carried out in the UK.

These include the Nissan-led HumanDrive project which, in November, saw a modified Nissan Leaf electric car cover 99% of the 230 miles between Milton Keynes and Sunderland in fully autonomous mode, and Driven, led by software developer Oxbotica.

This £13.6 million project ran from April 2017 to December 2019 and focused on completing fully autonomous routes within the complex urban environments of London and Oxford.

The Government has produced a code of practice to provide guidance on trialling AV technologies on public roads or in other public places in the UK.

It makes recommendations on how to maintain safety and minimise potential risks, and was this year supplemented by two new key documents.

PAS 1881 Assuring Safety of Automated Vehicle Trials and Testing was released by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in its role as the UK’s national standards body, and Zenzic, the organisation dedicated to accelerating the self-driving revolution in the UK. In addition, Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) created an updated Safety Case Framework Report 2.0.

PAS 1881 has been delivered in conjunction with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), Department for Transport (DfT) and Innovate UK.

Document author Camilla Fowler, head of risk management at TRL says it aims to accelerate the safe use of connected and autonomous vehicles with guidance and technical standards.

It includes a safety case which details the aim of the trial and what technology is being used. This filters into a risk assessment as well as identifying what action can be taken to mitigate any risks.

“Until this standard was released, there hadn’t been any regulations or standards that document what should be within a safety case,” she says.

“Building trust is about addressing fears over safety and security and one of the key things we need to make sure of is that we are very transparent in our approach to managing those fears.

“Publishing safety cases will go towards helping public trust in AV trials and testing so they can understand what it is that is happening, how many vehicles and where is it happening, what the test objectives are, what are the key risks and what are the control measures.”

New risks

However, risks – as with all new technologies and road transport – will remain.

“There are still more than 27,000 people killed or seriously injured on our roads each year and while CAVs have real potential to reduce that number significantly, they also could bring new types of risks” says Catherine Lovell, deputy head of the Government’s CCAV.

“The sensors could fail to properly gain information about the environment around them, the vehicle could fail to correctly interpret that and choose a safe driving course.

“Or they might be vulnerable to things like cyber-attack in a way that current vehicles are not. So, in CCAV, we’re trying to sort of bring those benefits forward as fast as possible while also being aware of those risks and tackling them.”

It is clear that setting the right expectations for the safety of self-driving cars is an important factor in winning public acceptance for the technology.

And while it would be possible for AV developers to strive for close to zero risk of causing a collision, injury or fatality, it would take a very long time to develop and prove that systems are at that level, says David Hynd, chief scientist for safety and investigations at TRL.

“There is a balance to be made,” he adds. “If you wait that long, a lot of people will have been injured and killed in the meantime, so part of the idea is to find a good balance between what you are really aiming for long-term and being able to save lives and serious injuries as you go along that journey.”

So, how safe is safe enough for an AV?

“It sounds like a very simple question, whereas it’s a really big and quite a difficult question to answer,” says Hynd.

“A lot of people talk about defining safety in terms of a comparison with human drivers, so you could say it’s got to be at least as safe as human drivers.

“It’s got to have no more collisions, no more serious injuries, no more deaths than we currently have on the road network.

“But, if you think about the number of collisions that involve a human component or some kind of failing from the human driver such as drink-driving or speeding, if the car is doing the driving task then it automatically doesn’t have any of those things.

“For me, the target has got to be – as a minimum – that it does at least as well as a very good, alert human driver who is paying attention to the driving task.

That is still quite a woolly definition, but is quite a lot safer than humans on average because everybody sometimes is not as awake as they should be or is not paying as much attention as they should be, and we have other poor behaviours on the road as well.”

Crash reduction likely to be less than expected, says new report

Self-driving cars could reduce collisions by a significant amount less than commonly-held industry expectations, according to new analysis by America’s Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

The technology has sometimes been touted as key to reducing crashes to almost zero, but the research group, funded by US insurers, found self-driving car technology may actually cut collisions by just a third.

“Building self-driving cars that drive as well as people do is a big challenge in itself,” says Alexandra Mueller, research scientist at IIHS and lead author of the study. “But they’d actually need to do better than that to deliver on the promises we’ve all heard.”

For the study, researchers analysed more than 5,000 police-reported crashes and determined the driver-related factors contributing to those.

They imagined a future in which all the vehicles on the road are self-driving. They assumed these future vehicles would prevent those crashes that were caused exclusively by perception errors or involved an incapacitated driver.

That is because cameras and sensors of fully autonomous vehicles could be expected to monitor the roadway and identify potential hazards better than a human driver and be incapable of distraction or incapacitation.

Crashes due to only sensing and perceiving errors accounted for 24% of the total and incapacitation 10%.

The study concluded these collisions might be avoided if all vehicles on the road were self-driving – though it would require sensors that worked perfectly and systems that never malfunctioned.

The remaining two-thirds might still occur unless autonomous vehicles are also specifically programmed to avoid other types of predicting, decision-making and performance errors.

However, the autonomous vehicle industry in the US says its cars are programmed to prevent a vastly higher number of potential crash causes, including more complex errors caused by drivers making inadequate or incorrect evasive manoeuvres.

Taking those design choices into account, autonomous vehicles could avoid some 72% of crashes, countered Partners for Automated Vehicle Education, a consortium of self-driving technology companies.

The group says it is “fundamentally speculative” to determine crash avoidance rates.

It adds: “We believe that reducing traffic fatalities by even a third would be something to be proud of. We aim to do even more.”

Other benefits of driverless cars

More accessible transport

In theory, driverless cars mean no driving licence, so people of all ages and abilities could access mobility. There is great potential for enabling older people and those with disabilities to travel.

“I can see AVs being very useful for people who maybe have health issues and are unable to drive, as it may increase their mobility and freedom,” says Camilla Fowler, head of risk management at TRL.

Reduced emissions

Widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles also has the potential to reduce energy consumption and emissions.

This can be done by optimising traffic flow for fuel consumption and platooning where AVs travel very close to each other to reduce aerodynamic drag.

If used as smart taxis or autonomous ride-share, AVs could require a much smaller fleet to service travellers’ needs.

“People often talk about the safety aspects, but I think there are very clear potential benefits in terms of minimising the use of energy to get people from A to B,” says David Hynd, chief scientist for safety and investigations at TRL.

“These benefits – in terms of efficiency and energy consumption – might actually come to be seen as the bigger wins for autonomous vehicles in the long-term.”

Cheaper transport

The costs of drivers and safety requirements (driver rest breaks etc.) are a major outlay for transportation companies. Vehicles that drive themselves would cost less to operate, enabling more, cheaper taxi and ride-sharing-type services.

KPMG says roughly half the cost of on-demand private hire vehicles relates to the driver and, as a result, estimates that AV mobility as a service provision could be up to 40% cheaper than private vehicle ownership by 2030.

Congestion reduction

In theory, driverless cars could organise themselves to optimise road use by ‘platooning’ and by automatically rerouting to avoid congestion.

“Spatially-aware vehicles will drive together at no cost to safety and future capacity increases will be achieved by platooning or cooperative adaptive cruise control,” says Lizi Stewart, managing director, UK transportation, at Atkins.

“Platooning will allow cars to drive with shorter headways and gaps of just 0.5 seconds is the equivalent to at least another whole lane on the motorway.”

Working with smart traffic control could further optimise road use and increase road safety. By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

This should still act as a warning to all companies and those that drive for work. Well worth a read!

Serious and systemic health and safety failings that led to the deaths of two employees in a works van would, some might think, attract a charge of corporate manslaughter.

Instead, the employer – Renown Consultants – was charged and found guilty under health and safety legislation and, rather than the police pursuing the prosecution, it was a regulator that was left to prosecute the case.

Twelve years after the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act came into force, there have been just 26 convictions.

Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings was the first company to be convicted under the new legislation after an employee was crushed to death when the sides of an excavated pit collapsed while he was collecting soil samples. The firm was fined £385,000 in 2011, which led to its closure.

Four years later, Baldwins Crane Hire became the first business to face a corporate manslaughter charge involving the death of a company driver.

An investigation by Lancashire Police and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed that the employee had been driving a heavy crane down a steep road, when the vehicle’s brakes failed and it crashed into an earth bank.

The company was fined £700,000 and ordered to pay £200,000 in costs after being found guilty of corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences.

BURDEN OF PROOF

Under the former corporate manslaughter legislation, the prosecution would have had to prove that a ‘directing mind’ – a director or manager – was guilty of gross negligence manslaughter to convict a company for manslaughter.

However, it was difficult to prove against large companies and, following several high-profile failures, the law was changed to allow a company to be convicted of manslaughter without prosecuting any individual.

Health and safety legal expert, Michael Appleby, a partner at Fisher Scoggins Waters, told Fleet News: “Since the law came into force, there have been very few prosecutions and nearly all of them have been against small companies with only a few directors, and, arguably, many of these cases could have been brought under the old law.”

A charge of corporate manslaughter has to be proved to the criminal standard; in other words, beyond reasonable doubt.

This does not apply to health and safety prosecutions.

A prosecution of a company for a breach of section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act for failing to ensure the health and safety of employees, or section 3 for failing to ensure the health and safety of non-employees, is much easier to prove, says Appleby.

“All the prosecution has to prove to the criminal standard is that there was an exposure to material risk and then it is for the company to prove to the civil standard, i.e. on the balance of probabilities, it did everything that was reasonably practicable to control the risks.”

FATIGUE FAILINGS

This was the approach taken in the case where two employees were killed in a works van. Zac Payne, 20, and Michael Morris, 48, died on June 19, 2013, when Payne fell asleep at the wheel of a van operated by Renown Consultants.

The vehicle ploughed into a truck parked in a layby on the A1 and caught fire. Both Payne and Morris were pronounced dead at the scene.

The previous day, Payne had left Doncaster at 4.30am and driven to Alnmouth, Northumberland, arriving to carry out work on the railway. The expected work did not take place. So, after waiting until midday, Payne returned to the Doncaster depot, arriving at 3pm.

On his return journey, he was asked to take on an overnight railway welding job in Stevenage and, with Morris, they set off from the depot four hours later, arriving at the site just before 10pm.

After nearly six hours working on the tracks, Payne was driving back to Doncaster when the crash occurred at around 5.30am.

The police investigation was handed over to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) in 2014, which found serious and systemic failings to manage fatigue.

Renown was found guilty in March, following a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

In sentencing the company, Judge Goldsmark said that, while fleet safety policies were in place, operations managers paid “lip service” to them.

Furthermore, despite the company’s insurance policy stipulating only over-25s may drive their vehicles, the judge said it was “common practice” for younger employees to drive to and from jobs.

He said senior operations managers at the Doncaster depot “cut corners”, with “expediency” often overriding known safety policies, and there was a “wilful blindness”, when it came to the management of fatigue, driver time and distances to and from jobs.

He also said that the paperwork relating to fleet-related audits did not tell the full story and breaches of health and safety legislation were “systemic and long-lasting”.

‘NO DIFFERENCE’

Peter Eldridge, a director at the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP), says a “virtually identical” case occurred in 2003, with a company called MJ Graves International.

Martin Graves, the owner, was jailed for manslaughter after one of his drivers killed a motorist. He was sentenced to four years for gross negligence manslaughter and 12 months, to run concurrently, for falsifying tachograph records.

Eldridge said: “I looked at the Renown case and couldn’t see a scrap of difference because there were systemic failings in the control, there were systemic failings on the part of individuals in the business at Renown and there were systemic failings on the part of the business.

“Why weren’t they prosecuted (for corporate manslaughter)? On the basis of the law, it’s difficult to understand why it wasn’t taken further.”

The police are responsible for investigating suspected cases of corporate manslaughter, but when it came to Renown, it was left to the regulator to pursue the prosecution.

Ian Prosser, HM Chief Inspector of Railways, told Fleet News: “The police had a look and I think they saw the potential complexity in how they would try and pull that sort evidence together.

“Corporate manslaughter is very difficult (to prove) and the HSE were not interested either in trying to take it forward.”

He explained: “We couldn’t bring a manslaughter charge, so we looked for failings in the application of their management system, which, in the end, was where we were successful.”

LEVEL OF FINE

It was the first time that the regulator had brought a prosecution in relation to failures of fatigue management.

Prosser says it was a “very difficult” case. “We were concerned that unless we had every ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’ crossed, we would probably have lost it.”

The firm was ordered to pay a fine of £450,000 and costs of £300,000 after being found guilty under sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act and regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations.

Sentencing guidelines for a company with Renown’s turnover, under corporate manslaughter, would have seen a starting point of £800,000 for high level of harm or culpability and £540,000 for a lower level of culpability.

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

The ORR says it didn’t take any action against the directors or senior managers as there was insufficient evidence.

Appleby said: “That may explain why the police did not pursue corporate manslaughter charges because they concluded they would not be able to prove senior management failure.

“It may also be the case that while the police could have concluded that the failure by the company was a bad failure it was not bad enough to be characterised as ‘gross’.”

The judge in his summing up concluded that Renown’s breaches of duty of care were due to the failure of senior management.

However, Appleby explained: “The judge did not go as far as saying that the breaches by Renown were gross breaches, which would be required for corporate manslaughter.

“What he did say was that the company fell far short of the appropriate standard, the breaches occurred over a long period of time and that they were a serious and systemic failure.” By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News

Private parking firms issued almost a quarter (24%) more tickets in 2019-20, compared to the previous 12 months.

Companies handed out 8.4 million tickets to British drivers during the last financial year, RAC Foundation analysis of Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency (DVLA) data has found.

This is up from 6.8 million in 2018-19. The data suggests tickets are being issued at a rate of one every four seconds.

Steve Gooding, director at the RAC Foundation, said: “Anyone who received a private parking ticket last year would have been in plentiful company – yet again the number of keeper addresses released by the DVLA to private parking companies has shot up, this time by almost a quarter.

“To put the numbers in context, if every one of the 8.4 million releases came with a ticket to the next Glastonbury festival, Michael Eavis would have to re-run the event over 60 times to fit everyone in.”

Parking companies can obtain vehicle keeper records from the DVLA to chase car owners for alleged infringements in private car parks. Each resultant ticket can cost drivers up to £100.

Sir Greg Knight MP’s Parking (Code of Practice) Bill officially became law in March 2019 with the aim of bringing rogue parking firms into line or putting them out of business.

It allows for a Government-sanctioned code of practice to replace the current self-regulatory standards that are drawn up by the industry itself.

Gooding said: “The hard graft of creating a new code of practice for the industry is currently under way. This will go out for public consultation before being presented to Parliament.

“But the code is just one part of the new framework that needs to be put in place, including a single appeals body and independent scrutiny of the private parking trade associations and their members.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We are committed to cracking down on the minority of rogue parking operators who exploit motorists.

“That’s why we are working with the British Standards Institution on a Code of Practice for the industry that is fair to both drivers and operators. We expect to consult on this new Code later this year.”

The DVLA charges private firms £2.50 per record.

The agency says its charges are set to recover the cost of providing the information and it does not make any money from the process. By Graham Hill thanks to Fleet News