A NORTH-EAST port authority faces unlimited fines after admitting it played a part in the death of a taxi driver.

Abdul Rashid drowned after driving his cab over the dockside at the Port of Tees.

His Vauxhall Astra was dredged from Tees Dock the day after a ship's captain spotted his body floating in the water, on March 26, last year.

Investigators initially thought he was the victim of an assault because he suffered injuries in the fall, but later realised he had missed a turning in the dark and had driven into the water by accident.

Yesterday, David John Robinson, managing director of the Tees and Hartlepool Port Authority, pleaded guilty at Teesside Magistrates' Court to failing to ensure the safety of a non-employee under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Mr Rashid, 49, was one of four taxi drivers returning officers to a Merchant Navy ship, the Norqueen, moored at the dock.

Health and Safety Executive inspector Martin Smith told magistrates that Mr Rashid had picked up Tarmo Nuutinen, chief officer at the time and now captain of the Norqueen cargo ship, in Middlesbrough, shortly before midnight on March 25.

He dropped the sailor at his ship and was negotiating his way out of the dock when his car went over the edge, flipped over and landed on its roof in the water.

Mr Smith told the court Mr Rashid was probably knocked unconscious by the fall and drowned.

It was a dark, clear night and the road was wet, making white markings which showed the layout of the route difficult to see. The port was lit only by security lighting, not by much brighter works lighting used when ships are unloaded at night, the court heard.

A highly-visible black and yellow barrier had been removed from the spot where Mr Rashid drove over the dock edge, a right-angle turn, after it was damaged several weeks before his death.

Magistrates were told fluorescent orange concrete bollards were put across the gap days after the fatal accident.

Simon Cattrall, solicitor for the port authority, said an estimated 175,000 taxi trips had been made to the dock in the 36 years the authority had been responsible for the port.

He blamed an unforeseen catalogue of coincidences which had conspired in causing Mr Rashid's death. Under normal circumstances, a ship would have been moored at the point where the car went over the edge, he said.

An inquest held in August this year recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Magistrates decided that their powers of sentencing - allowing them to fine the port authority a maximum of £20,000 - were insufficient, and committed the case to Crown Court. The company will be sentenced at a date and location to be decided.