BIRD'S EYE VIEW
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BY THE HAWK
• In a scene straight out of TV's Wacky Races, hundreds of rush-hour motorists ran slap bang into trouble last week when a lorry shed three tonnes of nails on the Al2 at Marks Tey, near Colchester. Many of them sufferd burst tyres, and workmen took two hours to clear up the mess.
In the Hawk's funny-loadsspilled department, this one runs a close second to the escaped turkeys.
• This week those bright sparks from Bosch showed the press (including one of the Hawk's colleagues) the vehicle navigation system they plan to launch in this country next June. An interesting little invitation to the event arrived in our eyrie cleverly designed to appear like a read-out of the Beach Travelpilot system.
It included a display of a map, just like Travelpilot, showing the location of the press launch.
Unfortunately, the map lacked enough detail to show either the road at which the launch took place, or three other major roads nearby. For the time being at least, the Hawk will be relying on his well-thumbed A to Z. . .
• Police attempts to take to the skies to trap speeding motorists have been blocked by the Civil Aviation Authority because of concern over helicopter safety.
Scotland Yard announced the introduction of a helicopter patrol to run speed checks on 8 August and it was intended to start flying over the A3 and M3 some 20 days ago.
The Civil Aviation Authority, however, has demanded that the spy in the sky must have a new airworthiness certificate to prove that the computerised equipment installed to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads will not interfere with its complex avionics and communications equipment.
• If you drool over pictures of thumping great trucks hurtling around racing circuits or thundering up a drag strip, you will like Mike Key's book Truck Racing.
Key knows his subject and gives a concise history of the sport and its leading lights, bt it is the photographs that stea the show: beautifully reproduced and full of gleaming chrome, technicolour paint-jot and throbbing engines.
This truck racing addicts' tome is published by Osprey and costs 26.95.
• Reader Tim Stubbs writes this week to tell the Hawk ho' pleased he was to see a photo of Aldershot Dennis Lance K3 No 144 in a recent Commerci4 Motor. He tells me that the vehicle's sister, No 145, is alive and well and being exhibited at commercial vehicle ral lies. Numbers 144, 145 and 146 were all based at the Hinc head depot of the Aldershot and District Traction company from 1950 to about 1962.
They were from a batch of 40 built, and had Dennis 06 er gines with five-speed crash boxes. Tim appeals to readers o send him photos of No 145: 'I wonder if any other vehicles if the class have survived?" he vrites. "So far as I know, 145 s the only remaining example."
Write to: Tim Stubbs, 1 -lighfield Drive, Winshill, Buron upon Trent, Staffordshire.
• TNT's success in getting ts foot in the door and capturrig the Giro delivery business luring the postal disute has left ;ome of the other independent .iarriers almost speechless and railing in its wake.
With TNT boss Alan Jones )opping up on TV this week tfter his top-level talks with iVhitehall mandarins about disnantling the Post Office monopoly, one of his rivals has grumbled to Commercial Motor that TNT wants to compete with the Post Office, but does riot want other companies to compete with it. "They want a iuopoly to replace the monopo ly," he moans. Surely TNT, the prophets (should that be profits?) of free enterprise would do no such thing!
• I wonder if any of you spotted the extraordinary similarity between Commercial Motor's parcels survey (CM 7 July 1988) and a test of the same parcels companies in The Sunday Times (4 September)? The Hawk wonders if they could by any chance be related.
Not that parcels surveys are the only Commercial Motor stories the illustrious Sunday Times seems to find valuable as silly-season space fillers. A lorry-speeding survey in the same issue was not entirely dissimilar to one we carried several weeks ago.
The newspaper was sent copies of both surveys the week they appeared in Commercial Motor. No doubt the very merest of coincidences! • Are you the kind of person who attracts weirdos on buses? You know the sort, they sit next to you on the top deck and start to tell you about ants, bunions or whatever.
If so, relief could soon be at hand from Leyland Buses in the form of a new optional extra; an escape chute. Specially designed to allow the complete evacuation of the top deck in the time it takes to say: "Did you see the size of those giants ants in Tescos — the big green ones. . .", the escape chute is sturdily built of hard wearing, PVC. For soft landings industrial-strength scatter cushions may be specified.
We caught sight of this preproduction version in a car park near Rugby where it was being used to entertain school kids on summer holidays. A worthy test, but we can't wait to see its installation on the double-deckers of London.