Two Cans and Fourteen Hours: The Last 60 Kilometres to Bavet
Your driver left Phnom Penh at 04:00 with a load of garments for Bavet. It is now 20:00. He has covered about 300 km, taken two 20-minute stops, and is 60 km from the border. At 17:00 he took a cold remedy containing chlorphenamine for a headache. At a roadside stop 40 minutes ago he drank two cans of beer (about 660 ml of 5% lager) because, as he says, it is only 60 km and he feels fine. It is dark, it has been raining for an hour, the road is unlit and the shoulders are unmarked. The customer has phoned twice demanding delivery before the factory closes at 22:00. The driver's eyes are red and he is yawning every few minutes.
1. Assess the driver's fitness to continue. Rank the factors and explain the interaction between them.
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He should not drive. There are four factors, and they multiply rather than add.
- Alcohol. Two cans of 5% lager is roughly 33 ml of pure ethanol, about 26 g. For an average adult male that produces a blood alcohol concentration in the region of 0.05 g/100 ml, and 40 minutes after drinking almost none of it has been cleared. That is at or around the legal limit, and the reading at the wheel would be higher than at the roadside stop.
- A sedating medicine. Chlorphenamine is a first-generation antihistamine; drowsiness is its main side effect, and alcohol and fatigue make it far worse. The cold remedy alone should have kept him out of the cab.
- Fatigue. Sixteen hours on duty, roughly fourteen of them driving, with only 40 minutes of rest, at the end of a working day and into the hours when the body's alertness is naturally lowest.
- The conditions. Darkness, an hour of rain, unlit shoulders and a border road full of trucks - the worst possible combination for a tired, impaired driver.
Red eyes and repeated yawning are not a diagnosis, but they confirm he is already past the point where his own judgement can be trusted.
2. What happens to the remaining 60 km, and how do you handle the customer?
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The load does not move tonight with this driver.
- Park legally and safely now. Find a lit, secure place - a truck stop, a factory yard, a police post - not the unlit shoulder of National Road 1 in the rain. Parking brake, wheels chocked if on a slope, load locked and sealed.
- Get him out of the cab and rested. No coffee-and-carry-on solution; caffeine does not remove alcohol or the sedative effect.
- Find a relief driver or a fresh crew if the delivery genuinely cannot wait, or delay to first light.
- Handle the customer honestly and through the company, not the driver. Tell them the vehicle is held for a road-safety and legal reason and give a realistic new delivery time. A late delivery is a commercial problem; a crash on a wet road at night is a criminal and human one.
- Record it. Log the decision, the time and the reason. A documented safety decision protects the driver and the company.
3. The driver insists on going. What is the legal position, and what is the company's exposure?
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The driver is proposing to commit an offence, and saying yes would involve the company in it.
- Drinking and driving above the legal blood alcohol limit is a serious offence under the road traffic law, with penalties that can include heavy fines, licence suspension or cancellation, and imprisonment. With a sedating medicine on board as well, the position is worse, not arguable.
- The operator's duty does not end with the driver. A company that knows the driver has been drinking and sends him out, or pressures him with delivery deadlines, shares responsibility for what follows. Instructing or permitting it is not a defence.
- Insurance consequences. A collision while the driver is impaired is very likely to leave the operator and driver personally exposed for the cargo, the vehicle and third-party injury costs.
- The correct answer is a clear, written refusal. Take the keys, log the reason, arrange relief or a morning delivery, and put the fitness-to-drive rule in front of the driver so it is a company decision rather than a personal argument.