Trucking - Wheel-loss hit sparks three vehicle cut
Article courtesy of routeONE Magazine

The licence held by East Lothian-based Robert Campbell, one of whose coaches lost a pair of wheels on the Edinburgh bypass whilst carrying a junior football team, has had the authorisation on his licence cut from six to three vehicles.

ROBERT CAMPBELL, trading as Campbell’s Coaches, of 17B Elphinstone Road, Tranent, had been called before the Scottish Traffic Commissioner Joan Aitkin at an Edinburgh Public Enquiry.

The Commissioner was told that maintenance was initially done in-house, but following an unsatisfactory maintenance investigation by the Vehicle Inspectorate, the Traffic Area was informed that maintenance had been contracted out to Brian Burns at R Flynn & Sons.
Mr Campbell, with his wife, also operated a taxi business and they had 70 vehicles in total. They hoped to get into school contract work from this summer and in anticipation of that, they bought coaches of various sizes. The coaches had not been used to any great extent.

Mr Campbell accepted a contract to take Tranent FC members to matches. On 6 March 2004, whilst taking the team to friendly match at Armadale, the two nearside rear wheels became detached whilst the coach was travelling at 60mph on the Edinburgh bypass. Vehicle examiner Douglas Pugh said that he attended the scene and imposed an immediate prohibition endorsed ‘S’ after examining the vehicle. It was fitted with spigot type wheelnuts. That type of wheelnut incorporated a combined nut and washer. The washer rotated freely until the wheelnut was clamped against the wheel flange. It appeared that the wheelnuts had not been fully secure prior to the wheel detachment as a direct result of the radial movement of the road wheels relative to their fixings. Both the securing studs and hub assembly had been damaged. Three of the six wheel studs with the wheelnuts attached were found close to the vehicle.

Those studs had sheared from the hub. The studs were extensively worn around the wheel stud shanks and the wheel nuts were excessively worn around the spigot washer and wheelnut washer flange. The other three wheel studs had also sheared from the hub. Those wheel studs could not be found. He examined the road wheels which had detached from the vehicle and found that the wheel stud holes were elongated which was indicative that the road wheels had been moving relative to their fixing.

The last safety inspection carried out on the vehicle concerned occurred on 25 February 2004, some 95 kilometres previously. He considered that the wear on the wheels should have been detected at at least the last safety inspection.

Evidence was given that this vehicle and others in the fleet had come without wheel trims. However, a decision was taken that to make these older buses seem less ugly, wheel trims would be fitted. Three bolts were used to fit the wheel trims which could be detached by use of a tool kept in the vehicle. It was estimated that it would take a driver five to 10 minutes per wheel to remove the trims. Drivers, including Mr Campbell, undertook walk-round checks but the presence of the wheel trims meant that the wheelnuts were not checked.

Mr Campbell said that he had prepared the vehicle concerned in the wheel loss on 6 March but had not checked the wheels except to the visual extent of seeing that the wheel trims were in place.

Agreeing that he had not taken any steps to ensure that the walk-round checks included checking wheelnuts or that the wheels were properly secured, Mr Campbell said that in his view this could not be done because of the wheel trims.

He had relied on the safety inspections done by Mr Burns. He did not expect a wheel to come off a bus that had just been checked. Mr Burns’ services had been used because of the heavy workload on his mechanics, who looked after the vehicles in the taxi fleet. In addition, at that time they had not had a suitable inspection pit, to which Mr Burns had access at Flynns.
Mr Campbell said that his nominated Transport Manager, Mr McLean, was part time and called for a couple of hours a week. Mr McLean had taken buses out but had not checked the wheels. It was only after the incident of 6 March that Mr McLean suggested removing the wheel trims. Mr McLean had not commented on the need for the drivers’ defect checks to cover the wheelnuts.

He accepted that mistakes had been made, said Mr Campbell. The vehicles were now inspected and maintained in-house. They were now at new premises with better facilities and an inspection pit. One of the two mechanics would spend more time on the bus side and would attend a VOSA inspection course at the end of July. An additional mechanic was to be hired. The business had acquired a torque wrench and a VOSA MoT manual. Revocation or suspension of his licence would result in him loosing school work which he had now gained, said Mr Campbell.

In cutting the licence, the Commissioner indicated that she would not consider any increase in the vehicle authorisation for at least nine months. She said that she believed that was necessary to enable the mechanic concerned to cope with the workload and for Mr Campbell to develop expertise in PSV operation. Two types of inspection were required of operators and were intrinsic parts of any road transport operation. They were the regular safety inspections and the daily walk-round checks/first use inspection. The incident on 6 March 2004 was an example of an incident that was totally preventable. Quite simply wheels should not come off vehicles for if they did, an immediate danger was created which could lead to death, serious injury and damage to property.

Attention to wheels was one of the very basics and she found it very alarming that two clear failings had occurred in this operation.

Firstly, there had been a significant absence of maintenance of the vehicles’ wheels and a complete failure to detect, at the last safety inspection, that the wheels were in a potentially unsafe condition. Secondly, at no time was anyone within the operation paying attention to those components of the wheels which kept them on the vehicles. By covering the wheelnuts with wheel trims Mr Campbell covered the means by which the first line of safety inspection could be undertaken and he put in place no compensatory measures. That was not picked up by the Transport Manager, whose part-time involvement was probably not sufficiently engaging to put him in the frame of mind that he was in control of safety issues. Even now Mr Campbell did not seem to realise that there was a gap in the management of his operation.

No one with the professional expertise and competence to know what had to be done was in charge. A coach or bus operator who put vehicles on the road without checking the wheels put his driver, passengers and other road users at risk. There was a professional competence deficit that Mr Campbell needed to address.

She bore in mind that there was not yet PSV maintenance expertise in the business. Mr Campbell’s failings could have had dire consequences and it was only good fortune that that did not happen.

For further information, please call Karen Bayliss on 01525 840557.

This article was originally published in RouteONE on 12/08/04.