Innocent techie jailed for taking hours to fix storage As Friday rolls around, The Register knows many readers are a little fatigued. Which is why we use this day to bring a fresh instalment of On Call – the weekly reader contributed column we hope amuses you enough to shake off a week of tech support torpor and traipse into the weekend with a smile on your dial. This week, meet a …
He said they were never able to pin down which regulation he was breaking so it seems either he didn't know about the regulation or there wasn't one.
Is there any regulation that you can't drive after a 9 hour shift? If so then loads of people are breaking it.
It's probably more likely that the officer saw he looked tired and decided he wasn't fit to drive.
Yeah, I am rostered for 12hr shifts in my response role, which can involve drives of up to 70miles in each direction (not to mention in my last posting, I had a 45 mile drive home, but I’m now closer). It’s perfectly legal, though driving when tired is considered almost as bad as being drunk.
There are often sometimes two of us, so we can split the driving, but not always and either way, we are both as heavily involved in the task, so both just as fatigued afterwards. Though, as I am the team leader and get bogged down in paperwork, I rarely drive.
Our control do always say that we can “stop for a rest” if we are too tired to drive, but I can imagine that would go down like a lead balloon if it were causing disruption to the network and I’ve not yet been brave enough to attempt it. But the day is coming.
In at least some states, you can be ticketed if you are so tired that it affects your driving. So it is possible the officer was simply acting in a preventative capacity. Long-haul truck drivers are required by law and union regulations to rest periodically on long trips, and must maintain logs to show that they have. You still have the reckless types that ignore the rules, falsify the logs, and occasionally fall asleep at the wheel, leading to everything from the truck running off the road to serious damage to very expensive transportation infrastructure. If that happens, a driver can lose their license to drive a truck.
There are laws in the US for professional truck drivers that kick in at 12 hours (out of 15) as being a maximum time driving without a rest. There is also a catch-all law that covers if you are driving at an unsafe speed for the conditions (and if you're asleep the only safe speed is 0), although the presumption of guilt in the case of an accident is usually after 24 hours with no rest.
In the US, where police work for the people, the cop might have been on shaky ground. I believe that in the UK, where it sounds like this took place, police technically work for the crown and may have some additional leeway.
I'm also guessing it was more of a friendly suggestion and the offer of a cot.
Funny story though. Would have been even funnier if they offered him a nightcap.
If that was in the UK, I'm calling BS...
You can't just put someone in a cell for being tired, you could let them stay in the cell and get some kip if it's a quiet day, but there would be no grounds for forcing them to stay there whatsoever, or preventing them from driving as there's no rules around hours when it comes to car - you'd have to then follow them and then prove that in your professional judgement they were driving either without due care and attention or dangerously.
There's either another angle to this story, or it took place somewhere oversees with very different rules and a more relaxed attitude to powers of detention.
It's still a good dit though, so I'll let it slide.
"Could have been in the Nederlands, it used to be illegal to exceed working hour restrictions there."
Note from your humble correspondent in NL: even if you're right I've never heard of somebody being locked up for that. And that would only be possible after they'd been convicted by a court. So not in NL, methinks.
Still, almost that time of the week again -->
Working hour restrictions only exist for a very limited amount of professions. Professional pilots and truck-/bus-drivers are the only ones that come to mind right now, but there are probably some others.
AFAIK the penalties are fines only, not incarceration.
Note that penalties for employers who force or willingly allow people to exceed working hour restrictions, are much more severe than for the employees. As it should be.
Pilot flying and duty hours are strictly controlled by aviation rules in most countries.
Airlines are heavily fined for breaches as fatigue is a major contributing factor in many accidents.
If there are delays at airports it is not unknown for flights to be cancelled due to the crew running out of hours.
There have been several accidents due to crews rushing to try to complete a flight before their hours expire, often as they don't want to be stuck at an outstation.
There are plenty of examples in the Mayday / Air Crash Investigation series.
E.g. Spanex crash where they rushed the checklist and tried to take off with no flaps.
But even if the Netherlands has laws against exceeding working hours, surely it is the employer who is liable for that crime and they won't toss you in jail for trying to work an extra hour!
If that's actually what happens, I think it is safe to say they are doing "worker protection laws" wrong!
> If that was in the UK, I'm calling BS
Hmmm.
I think if it had been me, I would have asked "officer, are you detaining me?"
If the answer is "yes" then there is a process they have to follow, records to be kept, (potential) lawsuits to defend. If no, then cheerio!
Though if "Julian" had then gone to his car, the same P.C. could possibly have arrested him for ... well, I'm sure he could have thought of something.
I'm sure there are general "driving while unfit ..." type rules in the depths of the voluminous English law. We have some rather quaint laws :
While you cannot be done for speeding on a bicycle (and some other vehicles such as steam traction engines, since they are not required to be fitted with a speedometer, you officially have no way of knowing your speed), there is an offence of "furious riding".
Locally, my wife has a tale of someone who used to ride a horse to the pub - and let the horse take him home. He was still done for something or other while under the influence.
>> ride a horse to the pub - and let the horse take him home. He was still done for something or other while under the influence.
Yes you can be prosecuted for riding under the influence, and MacDonalds don't like you to ride your horse through the drive thru....(not me - someone else I knew !)
"Wanton and furious cycling" is the law, dates from the late 1800s from memory. Someone got convicted of it in London a few years back after killing a pedestrian on a pedestrian crossing.
It's also illegal in the UK to be drunk in charge of various animals including horses, cows, and sheep.
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Okay, you can't DRIVE for more than 10 hours in a day, but you also can't WORK (labour + driving) for more than 6 consecutive hours without a break.
True, it's only a 15 min break required, but the officer could have simply forgot to mention that bit. And he didn't arrest Julian, he just sent Julian to the cells... where there's a bed he can take a nap. And taking away the pager only serves to ensure it is a 15 min break without disturbance... and if Julian happened to fall asleep... at least it wasn't at the wheel.
Depending on the country a contract clause for unannounced overtime is illegal, that clause would not be binding. There are exceptions for actual emergencies, like fire fighters or a big IT outage. Which was not the case here. I doubt the police office was as rude as this story sounds him to be, since you can easily put a nice tough of irony and "not really serious" in a voice.
You know, like the difference between counting from one to ten as "Count von Count" or as "Rammstein"...
"There's a 6 hour law in the UK: You have to take a break after 6 hours continuous work (including driving).
It's a 15 minute break."
It's a minimum 45 mins break after driving 4.5 hours (if you're a commercial driver), minimum 10 hours rest before starting driving.
I had to go on site in a foreign country to help diagnose a problem on a bank's system. I did not speak the language, so had someone with me who could translate.
We were allowed into the inner sanctum operations room - having been through airport like security.
I was given very clear instructions do not touch >anything<. If you want to look at the next screen ask, and the bank's staff will press the key for you.
I was given these instructions several times, so I wondered why. It turns out the week before, someone from another vendor had scrolled a display to check something, and had been caught by the video surveillance. The person was taken away and put in a room while "management" were involved. I think a senior manager from the vendor had to come and apologise to the head of the bank's IT security.
As a result every visitor was told "Do not even thing of touching the system. Do not touch a screen to point out something - it could be a touch sensitive screen. Keep your hands in your pockets".
Despite this the bank's staff were very helpful and emailed me things of interest, so I could help diagnose the problem. Afterwards we went out for a meal to celebrate. It turned out that the previous year, a visitor had managed to cause a major outage which was national headlines for days.
I worked for several years for a large system vendor embedded with the client's own support team at a secure site with significant vetting requirements. For certain types of consultation, it was not possible to completely vet technicians or performance consultants to the extent that would allow them full access, and for these people there was a strict 'you *MUST* not touch the keyboard' policy (and because of the nature of the site, they would be probably committing an offence under the Official Secrets act if they did). I was allowed hands-on under the visitors direction, as long as I was happy that what they were asking to see would not display anything they should not be allowed to see.
At the same site, when it came to decommission the systems, which were being taken out largely intact but sans storage, I had to securely scrub all the storage before removal and sign a secure destruction declaration before the decommissioning engineers were even allowed on site (who also had to be escorted at all times).
As soon as these systems were removed, because I was only there for the purposes of supporting them, I was essentially escorted off site myself!
That sort of paranoia is the mentality behind those pushing to weaken encryption. They have these massive secrets that must be kept, so they assume that we all have such secrets.
Problem is, our "secrets" are often mundane crap like cheated on the wife, fiddled the tax return slightly, have a favourite child, told the boss I had an urgent medical appointment because I couldn't be arsed...and so on. They'll end up wasting a lot of resources fouining through a massive haystack in order to find the one twat that uses SMS to plot his dastardly deeds...
Well, to be honest, because there was nationally sensitive information classified at "Secret - UK eyes only" on the systems, you can understand the paranoia a little.
Whether the information was really at that level was above my pay grade, but I did wonder sometimes, considering what work was being done.
Those kind of procedures are made up by people with little grasp of the situation , and are either too piss poor or to over the top depending if they were presented with options.
too little:
the "Dont touch the screen" something they made up in leu of real security.
too much:
Do you want me to wipe the drives before disposal?
"yes we want the best possible security , can you do more?"
do you want me to run data overwrite routines?
"yes we want the best possible security , can you do more? "
do you want me to run a pillar drill through each drive ?
"yes we want the best possible security , can you do more? "
I could melt it down in a forge after that
"yes we want the best possible security , can you do more? "
well , Theres this volcano in fictional land called Morder but its a bit of a trek
I had the opposite.
Had to provide a replacement router for a government site. The original was to be reused and was collected by a third party, who would 'sanitise' the router and return it to me for reuse elsewhere.
Because they had a tendancy to leave the 'bypass startup config' set (they weren't allowed the passwords), that was the first thing I checked. Yes, it was set to 'bypass'... not only that, the config was still there, including certificates... I could have simply flipped the 'bypass' flag and rebooted to have a working router!
Keep your hands in your pockets". That’s one of my mantras - SOP in a new situation!
This brings back memories of working on old high voltage valve(tube) equipment. If you were testing it while it was on you would always keep your left hand in your back pocket!
Had a friend who was caught in a waiting area for hours due to a site emergency. Seriously locked down site, and you had to wait in dedicated areas before an escort arrived. He was in one of these areas when an alarm went off and the site went into lockdown.
On the flip side, I've seen a bank send sensitive information via unencrypted email (despite me warning them not to multiple times beforehand). Didn't even need that info for diagnostics.
50 years ago, when paper dumps were used for diagnosis, a secretive organisation in America had a problem. They reluctantly sent a dump in ... but any sensitive/secret information in plaintext on the right was cut out with scissors leaving holes in the paper. The people did not realise the data was in hex on the left hand side of the paper.
Someone else send in a word document with text redacted. They had just made the text white on a white background. So we just changed the style to be black text on white backgrond and showed it all.
Quote
"Someone else send in a word document with text redacted. They had just made the text white on a white background. So we just changed the style to be black text on white backgrond and showed it all."
As I remember, it was a FBI/CIA breifing document that got published on the interwebs as a PDF file......... with black text on a black background for the bits they wanted to keep from us.
Rolling the mouse over it to select that text revealed what it had to say
And it was featured somewhere on el-reg....
That's extremely common.
Our local government does that with the 'private' details on agendas and minutes. Quite why they bother is unclear as the redacted bit is often public knowledge anyway.
I do wonder whether screen readers even notice when they hit the black text on black background.
I was building a studio and lifted some ceiling tiles to investigate cable routes.
Imagine my surprise to find I was looking over a 'stops at the tiles, not the floor-slab' wall straight into the bank next door's 'strong-room.'
The manager wasn't at all happy, and builders arrived at the bank in double time.
Before my time, but a tale from the era of a 'Crisis' somewhere bordering a large waterway in the eastern Mediterranean.....
Our company had a 'problem' at an important site. This was largely caused (in the company's evaluation of the issue) by a poor specification and so two Directors went to 'sort it out' directly with the Consultant and Customer/end-user. On arrival, they were promptly arrested and jailed until they had arranged for the problem to be resolved at the company's expense.....
I know this story because much later, I was searching for a special piece of equipment which was used at the time. I was informed (by the director's son!) that it never completed the return journey and the equipment was thought to be sitting in a wreck at the bottom of a particular stretch of water.
A salutary tale for trips abroad 'trouble-shooting'.
I remember hearing a story from a company I worked with, back in the 80s. One of their customers in Africa (Nigeria, IIRC) had a problem, and required that a techie be sent. None of the UK nationals in the office would agree to go, it wasn't the safest place in those days, but one (fairly junior) Kenyan accepted the job. When he got there they informed him that he wouldn't be permitted to leave until he had fixed the problem, and had someone watching him constantly. After a week or so, realising that he couldn't find an acceptable fix by himself, he quietly took his passport into the office but left everything else in his hotel. As soon as his minder went for lunch he high-tailed it to the airport & got the first flight out that was going anywhere acceptable. I don't know if the problem was ever solved.
Caring plod gives overworked techie good excuse for some downtime.
Techie embellishes "into this cell you go" ("and would you like a cuppa?" left out)
El Reg embellishes: "jailed"[1] (and still not to the point of being charged)
Commentards strongly declare[2] that whole story is a pack of lies.
'Twas ever thus.
[1] ahem, "gaoled" if you would be so kind.
[2] rant
Same here, I'm still a youngster compared to some of the commentards here, but at 60 can't really remember "gaol" being used except in very rare and special circumstances. I do remember the first time I saw it, as a young child of about 7 or 8, spelled that way and I read it as "goal" and got told "it's pronounced jail" :-)
My employer had a rule that you were not allowed to drive to or from the airport if flying. We were allowed to get a private hire car (with driver) for the journey; this was routine and my employer had a contract with a local company providing airport taxi services. This was always described as an H&S issue, but I'd be interested to know whether driving while on company business is covered by rules similar to those for HGV drivers, with time in the aircraft counting as work hours. I suspect the whole thing is a legal can of worms! Even if not covered by law, I'd imagine the HGV rules would provide context for any ruling on H&S issues in the event of an accident.
As others have said, I think the real situation has been "improved" to make a good story - the police officer judged that he was too tired to drive safely and OFFERED him a bed in a cell! And as I know of at least one RTA that was caused by fatigue (a nurse coming off a long shift), I think the officer behaved correctly.
A police officer also once told me that very few vehicles - even brand new ones straight off the dealer's forecourt - were completely legal; there was almost always some tiny thing that would allow them to take it off the road. It's little things like numberplates that do it (in the UK there are strict rules about the size and shape of the letters and numerals, as well as rules regarding obstruction by fixings).
"A police officer also once told me that very few vehicles - even brand new ones straight off the dealer's forecourt - were completely legal; there was almost always some tiny thing that would allow them to take it off the road."
Police will tell you all kinds of bullshit. Sometimes they even believe it themselves. In reality, almost all the 'tiny thing[s]' like that are grounds for stopping the vehicle and possibly issuing a fine, or a fix-it ticket, but are not grounds to impound the vehicle.
> some tiny thing that would allow them to take it off the road.
>> but are not grounds to impound the vehicle.
Impounding is the far end of the "take it off the road" spectrum. Sometimes it can be enough to pull someone over - or even just stop and have a quiet word next to their parked car - to change the situation for the better, get them to pause before driving (any more that evening).
At an employer of mine once, we had a rule saying we could have no more than a certain number of employees on the same flight, in case the plane crashed and we lost too many staff in one go. I can't remember the number but it was lower than the number of people you could easily fit into a big car and all drive to the airport together - which was probably more dangerous than the flight.
Going back to the 90s, there was a story about a small team who after doing overnight field work, decided they felt ok to set off on the 8hr drive back home to be back in time for tea. They made it a few miles before going off the road and into a ditch. I was soon in the same position, about to embark on the very same journey after pulling an all nighter. At the time I was too junior and shy to speak up. We got back ok, but it was a stupid thing to do.
A friend working in the IT department in the UK for a large multinational German pharmaceutical company would often be sent with a colleague to various places in America to do certain jobs.
Shortly after 9/11, an email from the boss was sent to all such similar employees saying something along the lines of "in future jobs, you must travel on separate flights, so that if one flight is downed, the other person can complete his dead colleagues work" (I don't remember the exact wording, but it was this blunt)
There was an uproar, and the policy was reversed. There was a mass hysteria following 9/11, and the tone of this email probably triggered dissent more than the underlying principle.
There was a “no more than X members of an organisation on a single plane” policy at Oracle.
Legend has it that this policy came into effect after a number of Oracle employees died on one of the 9/11 aircraft (Flight 93, the “let’s roll” flight). The guy who famously said “let’s roll” was an Oracle employee.
You want stupid? I once drove 20 hours in one day, during darkest winter (in Finland, so maybe 5 hours of light). Of course it was snowy too, and I picked non-main roads just so I wouldn't get bored and fall onto autopilot.
It was an interesting day but *never again*. My brain was deepfried after that.
A decade and a half (or so) ago, the wife & I did the ~2,300 mile road trip from Sonoma, CA to Tucson, AZ and back to attend a wedding. We were only off the Ranch about 48 hours. No, we didn't take the most direct route. Yes, most of it was I5 and Desert Highway super-slab at ~85MPH ... Two hour nap before the wedding when we got there, and 4 hours at the No-Tell Motel in Mojave on the way home. (Like myself, she usually only needs about 4 hours sleep per day.)
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure we should have taken the Cessna instead of the bikes ... maybe I'm finally getting old?
When I worked in Germany*, company were very strict, If I had worked beyond certain hours in the office (cannot remember how many hours now as it was a long time ago) I was not allowed to drive back to hotel, had to get taxi back (& in the next day as hire car would be at the office) - could claim back for taxi in that "driving banned" scenario.
It did mean on last day before flight back, had to make sure you did not do too many hours as would want car at the hotel, not having to get taxi to office to grab hire car from there!**
* I was UK based, so this only applied when I had to be working at one of the German offices for a week or two, which happened occasionally.
** Hire car only tended to apply if a group of us UK workers (as that way overall costs of hire car could give saving compared to public transport or taxi costs, as the 3-4 of you would be expected to share the same car), if travelling alone to work in De offices they would not normally let you hire a car
Only Fools And Health & Safety.....
Rodney: Trigger what are you doing here?
Trigger: Well Dave, Del Boy said he'd give me a lift down the pub.
Rodney: Oh I suppose that's... Hold on, you live closer to the pub then we do?
Trigger: Yeah I know, but Del Boy said he'd give me a lift down the pub.
Rodney: But Trigger, you've had walk past the pub to get to our flat!
Trigger: I know, but Del Boy said he'd give me a lift down the pub.
We were encouraged to take a taxi to/from a UK airport, after an American flew in from the west coast, and hired a car. He fell asleep at the wheel and was killed.
Whereas when we flew to the US we had to take a hire car. I remember a 12 hour flight and a one hour car drive to get to the hotel.
It could have been for insurance reasons. Driving to and from an airport to fly for work purposes may not under current insurance policy rules count as "Social, Domestic and Commuting", so unless you carried business insurance, you may not technically be insured.
Insurance companies nowadays look for as many reasons not to pay out as they can.
At one time, I worked for a UK bank, and they would never allow me to use my own vehicle to travel any significant distance between sites (but they would pay for either a taxi for shorter journeys or a hire car for longer ones. They claimed insurance as the reason, even though I did have business insurance for my vehicle.
The real problem with this was that I generally got a much smaller and less comfortable vehicle than my own for quite long journeys. Normally meant I was much more tired whenever I got to the other end.
The real problem with this was that I generally got a much smaller and less comfortable vehicle than my own for quite long journeys. Normally meant I was much more tired whenever I got to the other end.
When driving long distances, I take a break whenever I feel too tired to drive safely. In a small, uncomfortable car that will happen a lot sooner and more frequently than in a larger, more comfortable car. In a larger, more comfortable car I also tend to drive faster (where allowed like Germany), so that smaller car is penny wise and pound foolish.
And yes, when I get to the other end, I will be much more tired and thus less productive when using that smaller, less comfortable car.
It would also lead me to file a complaint with Health & Safety for the above mentioned reasons.
Commuting is usually classed as driving to your permanent place of work only.
So if you worked in Manchester office say and were asked to drive to Liverpool office instead for a meeting you’d likely not be covered. Same with airports, training courses etc.
In saying that, a lot of insurance policies will ask if you want say 1000 miles of business cover within your estimated annual mileage and won’t charge much if anything more for it.
Although as usual always pays to read the small print and check if you are switching to someone who is cheaper, might only be on their ‘premium’ policies.
I believe it catches a lot of consultant type people out since they aren’t commuting per se when driving to the employer since it isn’t their permanent place of work.
This was always described as an H&S issue
This is exactly the case.
Your employer has a legal duty to ensure your health and safety - within bounds, they can't, for example, say that someone who's job is digging holes can't use a spade in case they hurt themselves with it !
So if they allowed you, say, to come off a 10 hour flight and get into a hire car, then they would be guilty of H&S offences given that driving while tired is a known risk and it is completely avoidable. My employer has such restrictions in it's travel policies - coming off a long flight and then driving is forbidden, as is driving after a long work day. Of course, if you choose to leave your own personal car at the airport and then drive home in your own time then that's (largely) your own risk to take.
Now, if someone ignores that instruction and has an accident, the employer is still liable (because they didn't enforce the rule - their defence would be if they had reasonable processes to spot breaches and deal with them as a disciplinary matter but this hadn't deterred the employee), but also the employee is liable for prosecution under H&S law.
My employer had a rule that you were not allowed to drive to or from the airport if flying....This was always described as an H&S issue, but I'd be interested to know whether driving while on company business is covered by rules similar to those for HGV drivers, with time in the aircraft counting as work hours."
It does sound a bit over the top. possibly a reaction to a previous incident of some kind in the companies history. I think it more likely that they didn't want people arriving home on an overnight flight, possibly with little sleep, and then having to drive home in that state. Or maybe a number of people had complained about doing a full days work then having get up at silly'o'clock in the morning to get a very early flight
Drivers Hours are a thng if you use a company car, or your own car for business purposes.
In the Army Reserves, doing a full days work then pitching up on a Friday evening to drive either green fleet vehicle (armoured vehcile, landrover, anything green) off on an ex, or a white fleet vehicle (minbus, car, hire car), the RMTO will not permit one to drve if the total driving time added to the 8 hours already worked exceeds Drving Hours. Full stopi end of story, as both driver, chain of command, and MoD are liable in case of accident. Driving hours can be exceed under very spefic conditions, with the Commanding Officers signature, but these are exceptions and not the norm,
My current employer also enforces a similar policy, and insists that if one does a full days work, then one does not drive if using a company vehiicle or own car and claiming mileage - the reality is one is often told to book into a hotel, regardless of cost when such situations (thankfully rarely) happen
Indeed, and a very sensible rule. However technically that's an organisational rule, not a driving hours law restriction. Sadly I'm never likely to get the chance to drive anything green, and especially anything interesting and green, but I do use hire cars which come under much the same rules as white fleet (and the same flippin FMT1001 forms)
I was visiting a SUN site in Germany. The techie I had travelled specifically to meet was coming in from a different site. He arrived, shook hands, and then said he had to leave. It seemed he had, with driving, done his alotted hours and could not continue the meeting.
So, my flight, hotel, time out of the officem was all totally wasted.
"I was visiting a SUN site in Germany"
There is only one SunSITE in Germany ... although to be fair, there was one in Austria, too.
Useful occasionally. Recommended. Find and bookmark the SunSITE near you.
http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/index_1.html
One's at RWTH Aachen; the other was at the University of Vienna.
Once upon a time, about 35 years ago, I considered putting a truck of my own on the road which, as a legal requirement required that I became qualified with 'Prpfessional Competence Certificates in National and International Road Transport Regulations'. There are indeed British regulations on the amount of hours total of work and work related driving you can do which apply to all non-HGV and PSV vehicles such as cars and light vans. These are laid out in one or other of the Road Traffic Acts and If I remember correctly, limit you to a maximum spell of 12 hours combined work and driving to be followed by a minimum 8 hour rest.
I remember with shock chatting over a coffee somewhere in the North of England to a Tech Rep who said he had left home in Kent that morning, driven to Aberdeen, taken a chopper to a rig in the North Sea, fixed whatever needed fixing, a chopper back and was now on his way home to Kent. Talk about excessive hours !
Chris Cosgrove
Some short tales from my offshore days in the 80's...
Finishing the offshore training & having to crank the final exercise lifeboat back into its crane from the water in the torrential pouring November\December rain, while my colleague has a nice hot shower & bitching about me wanting one after getting soaked to the skin as he wants to avoid the Friday M25 traffic.
After hours - Given a hire car to go "chase" a courier drivers van from Swindon to the Malmesbury depot with important documentation that had to go overnight to be in Aberdeen, should I fail in my mission, turn about & go in the opposite direction to Heathrow & take a plane.
Pick up a co-worker from his house at 6am & get him to Heathrow (Some reason he couldn't drive).
Take a hire car to LHR to hand over to a colleague who for some reason didn't have his driving license to provide at the rental kiosk (I suffered from drivers fatigue on that one & damn nearly caused a RTA on the M4 going in when I zoned out for about 30 seconds) & then pick up "his" hire car with my license to drive back to Swindon (Suitably rested as I had to wait 90 mins for him to show up).
Colleague was tasked after a full day to drive to Hull with a Gyroscope urgently required for a ship that was due to sail, unsurprisingly he fell asleep at the wheel, wrote the truck & the Gyro off & was off work for about 3 months due to injuries suffered.
Driving a 7.5 ton truck with survey equipment, on my own (I had a co-worker passenger on the way up) after the inshore survey (Every other fucker flew back while I had to detour to Luton to drop off some of the kit we rented before 2pm Monday), the client rep wanted me to drive him in the hire car to Glasgow airport at 6AM Sunday morning, then I was to drive back to Faslane & take the 7.5 ton truck. Thankfully the senior guy from my company told him to pay for a fucking taxi rather than risk killing me from fatigue.
Icon - Well past Beer O'clock now, not for DUI.
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