Wheel Nut:
Yes Rog. And if this had been a case of the law, the police would be involved & then the courts would have punished the miscreant within the power of the laws of the land.This is a jumped up company making up their own rules to select someone to put them out of work.
I agree with you - as I have been subject to the same type of company ‘tricks’
ROG:
Alan DJ:
This annoys me this, surely there should be something in the human rights that would allow you to decide whether to wear a seatbelt.Or perhaps, wear glasses… we could go on…
The point is this - the driving licence is given in the understanding that the driver will conform to all the rules and regs that go with it - it is not a ‘right’ to have a driving licence - if a driver does not agree with those rules & regs then they do have the choice, under human rights, to not have or use the licence.
Hi Rog you must remember that you don’t need a drivers licence to have to wear a seat belt
The law requires that drivers and passengers aged 14 and over in cars, vans and other commercial vehicles must wear a seatbelt if available. As a driver you are responsible for ensuring that anyone under the age of 14 wears a seat belt or use an appropriate child restraint as required in the regulations. On 18 September 2006, the law concerning children using seat belts and child restraints changed.
NikNik:
tim williams:
See loads of car drivers not wearing seat belts,especially in town centres.Can coach passengers get fined,if the police did a random check,and passengers were not wearing seat belts.?Yes everyone can now.
If they are under 14 then its the drivers responsibility and anyone over its there’s. If your 17+ you can be issued a £30 fixed penalty but anything with minors will be a summons to court.
Not strictly correct. In a coach there are currently no rules for an under14 which require them to wear a seatbelt. It is certainly NOT the responsibility of the coach driver.
United Kingdom
Passengers, from their 14th birthday, must wear belts when they are sitting in a seat that has one. There are no rules (yet) for under-14s. This does not prevent passengers leaving their seat, for
example to visit an on-board toilet. All passengers are exempt from wearing seat belts where a bus or coach is certified to carry standing passengers, or where it is used to operate a local service AND the entire route is on “restricted roads” in a built-up area (30 mph, or lower, speed limit).
Drivers must wear belts when they are sitting in a seat that has one.
Handicapped passengers enjoy no exemptions from the requirements. Where handicapped people
are carried in wheelchairs on a coach, there must be suitable equipment for securing the chair and the passenger.
Liability: Operators / drivers are responsible for putting signs on vehicles or making announcements / showing a DVD to make passengers aware that belts must be worn. Drivers are not required to check that passengers are actually wearing belts; this is the direct responsibility of the passengers themselves.
Penalties: Drivers and passengers failing to wear a belt usually get a fixed penalty of GBP 30, but it is technically possible to be fined up to GBP 500.
Good Practice: CPT has produced a DVD and audio CD of customer safety information which can
be “customised” to members’ requirements if required.
The only time I don’t wear a seatbelt is on the rare occasions I drive a taxi. Other than that I always wear it. In some accidents you would be better off if you weren’t wearing it but the majority you’d be worse off. Plus its the law and I don’t earn enough to keep giving the law £30.
You’re trucks haven’t got some sort of telematics system that can tell them if the truck was driven without the seatbelt plugged in have they? Unless they have a picture of you not wearing it then it would be very harsh to even consider disciplinary action. It’s the sort of “offence” that should be dealt with by a quiet word not a kangaroo court.
Handicapped passengers enjoy no exemptions from the requirements. Where handicapped people
are carried in wheelchairs on a coach, there must be suitable equipment for securing the chair and the passenger.
Sorry to go off topic for a second, here…But this kind of thing seriously annoys me. For starters, I carry a Seatbelt Exemption Certificate because of my “handicap”, so I perfectly legally “enjoy” an exemption from compulsary seatbelt law. So the statement above is not necessarily true.
Secondly, what’s with the “enjoy”? Trust me, I don’t “enjoy” my condition, nor do I “enjoy” the fact that I can’t wear a seatbelt for protection - which is why I do in fact wear one whenever it’s possible, mostly in the car. It’s not a matter of “enjoyment” it’s a matter of necessity - seatbelt exemptions are not easy things to get, and I have come across many people who have tried and failed to get their paws on one for spurious reasons - they don’t even give them to pregnant women any more. I didn’t have to “try” and get mine, it was issued without question. I must remember to “enjoy” my good fortune, eh? 
Not having a go at you, offtherails, just yet again incensed by the ignorant language used in these publications. 
Ok…I’ll go now…Back to the subject, folks… 
Ski:
It really does all depend on what evidence they are able to provide to suggest you were not wearing the seatbelt. Remember it is against the law not to wear it, so if they can prove this you are on very dodgy ground, and could lead to dismissal for gross misconduct at a formal disciplinary hearing.I invited one of my drivers to a disciplinary after he claimed never to smoke in the vehicle cab - after I told him he had been seen he admitted that he had - but that he didn’t normally. The fact is it is illegal and there was irrefutable evidence that he had been smoking at the time in question - he resigned the day before the formal disciplinary hearing.
There seems to be to much of this lately…drivers willy nilly driving about with no seat belt on and smoking, risking their own health and safety and endangering others with their smoking habits. I for one am glad there are responsible employers such as yourself who take these matters with the seriousness that they deserve.
Mike-C:
Ski:
It really does all depend on what evidence they are able to provide to suggest you were not wearing the seatbelt. Remember it is against the law not to wear it, so if they can prove this you are on very dodgy ground, and could lead to dismissal for gross misconduct at a formal disciplinary hearing.I invited one of my drivers to a disciplinary after he claimed never to smoke in the vehicle cab - after I told him he had been seen he admitted that he had - but that he didn’t normally. The fact is it is illegal and there was irrefutable evidence that he had been smoking at the time in question - he resigned the day before the formal disciplinary hearing.
There seems to be to much of this lately…drivers willy nilly driving about with no seat belt on and smoking, risking their own health and safety and endangering others with their smoking habits. I for one am glad there are responsible employers such as yourself who take these matters with the seriousness that they deserve.
LOL
Glad to see all this health and safety stuff is taken so seriously
Getting pulled into bosses office for not wearing a seat belt, in my eyes would be on the boss or whoever else to prove i had been driving without a seatbelt. If it was just one person that saw me, whos to say they didnt make a mistake or are lieing. Start talking about gross misconduct and getting fired for an allegation of not wearing a seat belt on the word of one person, see you in a tribunal.
Smoking in the truck, been pulled up once by an employer when i was in a place regularly as a agency driver. Was asked if i had been smoking in the truck, acknowledged i had been smoking in the truck and would continue to didnt really care if i got sent back there or not was getting bored. Boss went mental, i explained i was a smoker like himself and how would he like to drive from Glasgow to Warrington for 4hrs 20mins without a ■■■, and couldnt then blame me if i stoped a few times en-route to have a smoke. I also explained that i kept the window open, made sure i cleaned the truck out so no ■■■ ash anywhere, wouldnt smoke the last 30mins up the road, give the truck a good airing and spray some air freshner when leaving. He seemed happy with this.
thats the thing i dont no what they got on me wont find out to the meeting , had a feeling somthing ewas up last week at work boss kept ssking what bay am i on or what veichle have i got so i guess he was checking up on me ,
my word against his i guess .
Deny everything, you always wear a seat belt, only time you don’t is in a yard or when reversing because wearing a seat belt hinders vison.
If the seat belt has been put round the back of the seat, that would have been done because you were in the yard and the flashing light or noise was annoying you whilst you were trying to reverse.
The outcome depends on a number of things, have you signed Safe Systems of Work or another company procedure that says you must wear a sear belt? if so this can be deemed to be Gross Misconduct on H&S grounds, if you’ve been told before to wear it it’s Gross Misconduct for failing to carry out a reasonable request.
Personally I think that things are being tightened up procedure and cost wise due to the current trading problems and they’re clamping down on all offenders, at least that’s what’s happening here and I wouldn’t expect dismissal unless they need to reduce and it saves on redundancy and notice pay.
I hope you don’t get more than a warning, anything else would be harsh.
The only time that I feel glad that I am retired,is when I read posts like this one.I have every sympathy for Davey Boy on this one.There was me thinking that it was Mr.Plod,s job to monitor seat belt wearing.Times have,nt half changed since I called it a day.There is no sensible advice that I could offer him,except to say ,that in the good old days, before we even had proper bloody seats; and when the only safety belt of any sort that you had ,was the one that held your trousers up, if the boss had tried something like this on,he would have got chinned, and told to shove the job where the sun don,t shine.You can, of course use the line that the IRA used to use, when caught with a bomb ,and a couple of AK47,s in the back of the car. “No Comment”.Failing that;If you have access to a digital tape recorder,switch it on before you go in, you then will have a record of the proceedings,in case this ends up at an Industrial Tribunal.Talk respectfully to the gaffer.Use Phil,s advice as posted above. if the boss is not in a listening mood,and he is threatening dismissal.Lamp him with the chair you were sitting on.Then exit stage left, with your pride intact.
Alan DJ:
This annoys me this, surely there should be something in the human rights that would allow you to decide whether to wear a seatbelt. I always wear a belt in the car but never in the lorry. I know at least 3 people who would be dead now if they had been wearing their seat belt in the lorry, the latest being a guy who went up the back end of a 7.5 tonne lorry on the M62, he was thrown out of his vehicle by the first impact and then hit by another truck as he was thrown clear bouncing him back underneath his own truck. He ended up with broken legs, arms, pelvis and all other breaks, the main damage being 70% burns from the gearbox oil of his own truck. He was laid up for at least 8 months in hospital. Police told his wife that if he had been wearing his seatbelt then he would not have been thrown clear and would not be here today.
Must we always see this ridiculous argument peddled out again and again whenever someone brings up anything about seatbelts. For everyone that has been killed because he/she was wearing a seatbelt there have been thousands whose lives have been saved because they were wearing one. I had a colleague who was involved in an accident in an Iveco 75E15 on the A14, the front of his lorry was destroyed from the steering wheel upwards but when I visited him in hospital ( he had a broken leg ) apart from the cage over his leg to hold the bedding clear of his leg there wasn’t a mark on him. He said that this was one of the few occasions he had actually worn the seatbelt but he wouldn’t be driving without wearing one ever again. He lived because he wore his seat belt and there are millions of people worldwide who are here today because they were wearing a seatbelt.
Someone has already brought up on this thread that on the continent if you aren’t wearing it you will lose a case for damages and what happens there ends up here.
Mike-C:
There seems to be to much of this lately…drivers willy nilly driving about with no seat belt on and smoking, risking their own health and safety and endangering others with their smoking habits. I for one am glad there are responsible employers such as yourself who take these matters with the seriousness that they deserve.
Keep your hair on, I think an anger management course could be in order here.
Who cares if a driver doesn’t wear his seat belt ? It won’t affect me. Besides, some drivers are exempt from wearing seat belts through medical conditions.
DieselDemon:
MikeC:
There seems to be to much of this lately…drivers willy nilly driving about with no seat belt on and smoking, risking their own health and safety and endangering others with their smoking habits. I for one am glad there are responsible employers such as yourself who take these matters with the seriousness that they deserve.Keep your hair on, I think an anger management course could be in order here.
Who cares if a driver doesn’t wear his seat belt ? It won’t affect me. Besides, some drivers are exempt from wearing seat belts through medical conditions.
I think that Mike was being sarcastic DD 
(i think)…cause Ski (who the post was a reply) to is whiter than white,never has or ever will do anything wrong ever,follows the rules and regs to the letter he reckons,doesn’t live in the real world and is practically perfect in every way …a bit like Mary Poppins.
endangering others with their smoking habits
Exactly how are they doing that then ? Carrying passengers at the same time perhaps ?
DieselDemon:
Mike-C:
There seems to be to much of this lately…drivers willy nilly driving about with no seat belt on and smoking, risking their own health and safety and endangering others with their smoking habits. I for one am glad there are responsible employers such as yourself who take these matters with the seriousness that they deserve.Keep your hair on, I think an anger management course could be in order here.
Who cares if a driver doesn’t wear his seat belt ? It won’t affect me. Besides, some drivers are exempt from wearing seat belts through medical conditions.
seams to me that the persons conducting this farce and that is what it is company acting as police judge and jury maybe they have plenty of time on there hands in the office they need ot get a life
ps alix776 posting
Kenny1975:
Deny everything, you always wear a seat belt
I’m guessing you have been invited to an informal interview that is classed as the ‘investigation’ of the incident that may lead to formal disciplinary action being instigated. If this is the case and you deny everything before knowing what the evidence your employers are sitting on you could talk yourself into a disciplinary for Gross Misconduct that would quite possibly lead to you loosing your job.
It never ceases to amaze me how quick people are to offer ‘sound’ advice or criticism on something they read on here without knowing the full facts. I mentioned a case of a smoker in my initial post - and then certain (the usual culprits) posters have a go. The fact is that in the initial investigation the driver denied that he had ever or would ever smoke in the vehicle (illegal and the vehicle operator is legally obliged to ensure that it does not happen). Had this driver put his hands up, admitted that he had smoked and then promised not to digress again an informal warning would have been the end of the matter.
However, those of you that actually know anything about employment law (not what their mate told them down the pub) will understand the importance that an employer puts on trust, especially in this industry - and to have an employee lie through their back teeth despite irrefutable evidence will damage that trust irrevocably and in this particular case led to a disciplinary hearing where the allegations of breaking the law by smoking in a defined workplace, and not being truthful when questioned during the initial investigation were to be answered.
My advice to you is to be perfectly honest when questioned, if you didn’t wear the seatbelt on the occasion that they question you about then admit it and give any mitigating reasons if there any. If it then went to a full formal disciplinary hearing you would probably not be dismissed for a single occurrence, although you may receive a formal reprimand such as a verbal or written warning. If you were dismissed at such a hearing for a single occurence then an employment tribunal may well be worth a go!
Yeah right go in be honest admit to doing something wrong, because possibly some jobworth with a suit has maybe claimed to have seen you not wearing a seatbelt and risk disciplinary action from another jobsworth behind a desk because they are looking at getting rid of some drivers on the cheap.
As i said before if you have been doing something wrong let the company prove you have been doing something wrong, going in admiting to doing something wrong in my eyes would be stupid.
Its good in this day in age with all the cut backs can still employ people to conduct spanish inquisition type interviews with drivers over petty issues, no wonder our haulage industry is going down the drain.
Your right Ski i don’t have much experience with this type of thing because typically i tend to avoid working for companies run by petty jobsworths.
As i said when i got pulled up about smoking i could tell my boss the truth because i trust him and know he is a reasonable person, same with other problems that have arisen like complaints. Trust is a two way street, would i trust some jobsworths in a suit, nah don’t think so.
i unserstand what your saying but sometimes i wear my belt sometimes i dont the alleged offence happened on feb18th the letter inviting me to the investigation interview was dated 25th one week later the interview is either tomorow or tues union getting back to me … i will go along and say as far as i know i was wearing my belt i honestly cant remember … you should have asked me on the day or nearer the time hard to remember what you done evr day esp when u been off away from work ,
Will they present there evidence towards me before disaplinay meeting ?
thanks