Road pricing warning
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• If the Ministry of Transport received no objections over its road pricing proposals it would assume that they were acceptable, Mr. Jackson Moore, general secretary of the United Road Transport Union, told Manchester Transport Managers Club last week.
The plans were very effective and very costly, he warned. The Ministry had managed to devise, test and prove faultless a device which every vehicle owner would have to fit, estimated to cost £35. He would have to buy a cassette—about 5—to insert in the instrument when driving into congested areas. A trip wire would activate the device to start devaluating the tape. A light visible through the windscreen would assure the police that the vehicle was paying. A second and third wire would activate more lights to ensure proportionally less yardage per unit was being allowed. Parking meters would be unnecessary because a fourth section would calculate parking time.
It might sound like a Jules Verne idea but although it was now in black and white it had received no Press or TV publicity. He called on operators to write to trade associations. "Somebody had got to start talking if we are going to defeat it," said Mr. Jackson.
Security vetting of drivers was another subject that required airing, felt Mr. Moore. "The Home Office have decided that certain drivers on the road ought to have their finger prints and their photographs taken and ought to be issued with special licences to drive vehicles carrying valuable loads," he said. If this referred only to gold bullion it would be acceptable, but where would the line be drawn?
Road legislation throughout Europe was designed to support the ailing railways. The recent AETR conference in Geneva was, in his opinion, seeking ways to make the haulier's life so unbearable that he would leave the traffic to rail. An eight-hour driving day was advocated because of driver fatigue. This was not supported by a Ministry survey five years ago which showed that a driver was more fatigued during his first hour than the ninth and tenth. Although Britain called for a nine-hour day, if the shorter period was introduced in Europe it would not be long before we conformed, considered the speaker.
He thought the Ministry had decided to dispense with tachographs in favour of a sophisticated form of logsheet, the responsibility for which would rest on employers. Proposed legislation for h.g.v. licences was far too complicated and an explanatory document had turned out to be more difficult to understand than the original, but a further one was expected in June.
During question time it was pointed out that one of the problems of this licence being split up into many categories was that a top-class driver would require top-class money and that he would want to drive a bottom-class vehicle for the same wage. A proposal to reduce the minimum driving age to 18 was to be submitted to an AETR meeting in September and would probably be ratified by European governments within two years, so recruiting problems might be alleviated, said Mr. Moore. However, to obtain RTITB assistance for training, men would have first to be employed in the industry.
Mr, B. Wild, McVeigh Transport Ltd., challenged the URTU's veto on tachographs. The unions would only agree if the instruments were used for strict enforcement of the law and not by employers to penalize drivers for stringing out time. "You want tachographs where they suit your convenience," he said. If he was paying top wages he felt he was entitled to an employee with the mentality to treat his vehicle as if it were his own.