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Video: Truck Drivers Face Jail Time For Charity YouTube Stunt

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A YouTube video that was filmed to promote a charity has gotten a trucking company and its drivers in hot water and may even lead to the drivers spending some time in jail!

The first video shows three trucks driving down a main road in Ireland.  The video was being filmed for an Irish children’s anti-suicide charity.

The trucks were driven by two Polish drivers and one Irish driver who are all employed by McAuliffe Trucking.

The video was posted to YouTube and has drawn much criticism.  Eventually the video was forwarded to law authorities and the drivers were cited for and pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.

An Irish judge called the acts of the drivers “outlandish and scandalous” and called it a “frightful example.”

“There was absence of ordinary plain common sense here,” he said.

“It should never have happened. It should never have been advertised. This is scandalous.”

The men are facing no less than a 2-night jail stay.  No maximum sentence was announced.

This isn’t the first time the carrier has drawn fire for its actions while filming a charity video.  The video below shows the same company filming a YouTube video for the charity.

The video shows a truck parked in the country’s slow lane.  Two cars come upon the stopped truck and narrowly escape what could have been a serious crash.

The cars do end up bumping the truck.  No one was injured.

This video also drew serious criticism.  In response to the criticism, the company issued this statement:

To Whom It May Concern,

Hoping you are well. I am a manager in McAuliffe Trucking. We are established since 1970 and take great pride in our fleet, drivers and staff.

We contribute our time to charities and regularly make donations. Since there is a local Charity Scania Truck run in Kerry, we could never get involved as we run DAF trucks so we said we would start our own Charity DAF run or an all make of truck Charity run.

We recently had a little girl succumb to Leukaemia and we named our flagship DAF in memory of her. This truck is now called Lady Ava. We also got vinyl stickers made with the Leukaemia penguin to raise awarness and to keep a constant memory of Ava. We have these fitted to all our trucks and can send you a pack if you want to give me your details.

On Sunday 14/10/12, we had a photo shoot to start the promotion of our Charity run. I had called the Castleisland Gardai seeking permission on Friday 12/10/12 to conduct a photo shoot on the N21 and the Castleisland Bypass. The Gardai gave me permission to do this which be verified at Castleisland Garda Station.

I then arranged a meeting with all staff for 3pm on Saturday 13/10/12, all details were discussed and jobs and traffic controller positions were assigned. I also carried out a full risk assessment and received signatures of all involved. The weather on Sunday was good so we arranged to meet up and begin preparations for the photo shoot. There were traffic controllers positioned at the front and back of the three trucks for the duration of the video shoot.

Still shots were taken at the view point and the bridge on the bypass of Castleisland afterwards. For the still shot on the bridge, I sent only two drivers to the bridge as the third driver did not know his way there. He stopped under the bridge with his hazard, parking and dipped headlights on and waited for one of the other drivers to come down the steps and sit in with him to guide him to the bridge road. He was waiting no longer than one minute and during this time, a silver car came up behind him and swung out in to the path of another car. There was a touch of bumpers and the two cars stopped, the drivers got out, talked to each other, shook hands and drove away.

Unfortunately, this was captured by someone on a phone, uploaded on YouTube and has since gone viral. As soon as we heard about it, we got the video taken down immediately but then someone uploaded it again and titled it “McAuliffe Trucking Dangerous Driving”.

Every person involved in the photo shoot is dismayed after putting their free time at their own expense into both Saturday and Sunday for a worthy charity promotion, only to have backfired due to a small accident that was caused by a car not watching his lane while our company was also put up on YouTube and portrayed by a small minority as dangerous driving.

Now as you can see, we had received permission from the Gardai, carried out a Risk assessment/Risk report, had plenty of qualified personal to arrange everything whilst wearing HiViz gear and everything went according to plan.

I would also like to mention that we received a phonecall this morning from Breda O’Brien, Suicide Awareness, asking McAuliffe Trucking to help raise funds for the organisation. If you wish to donate or contribute to these charities, please contact McAuliffe Trucking.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to all the staff and everyone that came in on Saturday and Sunday on their days off to help and assist in everyway the Charity Truck run. They’re a great bunch of people.

We apologise for the distress that may have been caused as this was not our intention.

Kind and Very Best Regards
Davy Corkery
McAuliffe Trucking.

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