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Page 36
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All done by numbers
ONCE it had been decided to limit the working day of a driver by law some system of records was necessary. As so often happens in circumstances of this kind the system has become more important than the original purpose.
There was understandable concern that drivers who had been at the wheel for more than a certain number of hours would be tired and accident prone. It has been argued recently that there is no evidence to support this assumption. But even if one accepts it there is equally no evidence that the use of log sheets has brought about a substantial reduction in driving time, Year after year the official figures show that road haulage drivers work far longer hours on average than anybody else. The official estimate of 56.6 hours in April last compares unfavourably with averages of around 45 for most other industries.
Nobody takes the statistics completely seriously. Even in its green and salad days the Prices arid Incomes Board was able to detect "a considerable disparity between real working time and the apparent working week". The Board's first report from which these words are taken went on to say: "We intend, through an appropriate 'sample, to try to measure the extent of this disparity."
Wiser counsels may have prevailed and the intention was not fulfilled. But it is notorious that the disparity exists and that it is substantial, The Board believed that the explanation lay in the low statutory basic rates of pay for a 40-hour week—still 42 hours at the time of the Board's report—and the aim of the driver to put in as many hours of overtime as possible.
Log sheet influence
What was not even considered was the possible influence of the log sheet. When so much stress is laid on the number of hours worked the drivers and the employers may have a deep-rooted belief that there can be no better method of determining wages. Higher productivity does not show up on the record as it would for example on a tachograph chart.
No hint that there might be a different and better way of doing things was allowed to hinder the progress of the Transport Act 1968. If log sheets had failed to do what was required of them the solution lay in bigger log sheets. Operators who have studied the draft regulations on drivers' records are slowly beginning to understand what is entailed.
Everything is to be done by numbers. The registers the operator has to keep will each require a number and so will each page of each register. There will be a separate set of numbers for the record books and for their pages.
Clearly the purpose of this arithmetical interweaving is to make evasion more difficult. For the same reason the record forms have to be bound into books and not issued as separate log sheets; and they have to be completed in duplicate, "in ink, idelible pencil or with a ball point pen" as the regulations put it.
If a driver or operator is determined to break the law governing drivers' hours he will no doubt still find some way of doing it. However, the other provisions of the Transport Act, the introduction of the heavy goods vehicle driving licence and other legislation are expressly designed to eliminate the unsatisfactory driver and operator.
The present log sheets and enforcement system might have provided a sufficient check. It is what the soldiers call overkill to insist on even more elaborate record books and registers in addition to testing, operators' licensing, transport managers' licensing, more offences, higher penalties and the rest Inevitably the new system will take up more clerical time apart from the extra time the driver may have to spend in completing the actual records. At most points the procedure laid down is rigid and even the apparent concessions, apart from being trivial, may turn out to be more nuisance than the little they are worth, The Ministry of Transport is at pains to impress upon the operator that he has freedom to choose so long as his choice is concerned only with inessentials. For example, the official record books show the numerous necessary column headings more or less in the order in which the events of the working day are likely to happen. As a concession the operator is allowed to change the order if he so wishes on books that he has had printed himself.
Most operators will resist the temptation to show the end of the working day before its beginning or to ask the driver to sign half way through the record rather than at its completion. In the same way the operator will think little of the gracious permission to add to the prescribed column headings if he so wishes. He would take for granted that this was allowed.
He may wonder still more at being told that times may be shown as a.m. or p.m. or on the 24-hour clock system. It is difficult to know what other method can be used apart from sidereal time. Within the scope of the narrow Ministerial ruling the driver might be tempted to mix up the two systems.
The four-hour concession may also lead from time to time to a bizarre situation. To some operators it will be useful. If during a week a driver has on no day been at the wheel for more than four hours he does not have to keep records for that week.
Presumably what the regulations have in mind is the man' employed part time as a driver or whose main activity in the firm is in some other capacity. It might be thought mere levity—that is to say the records examiner would not be amused—if a general driver maintained that until he had actually driven for four hours at the beginning of a week he was not obliged to start keeping his log.
The occasional driver would begin confidently without worrying about documentation. One day later in the week he may find that he has driven for over four hours. He is still out of the law's clutches if the extra driving has been in the course of agriculture, forestry or building and construction and has been off the road.
If these two saving clauses do not apply he is no longer in a state of grace. One supposes he must lose no time in getting a record book from his employer. The four-hour concession has so far exempted him for the week so that he would be advised to keep the record for the same period.
It could happen that on an earlier day, although he has not driven for more than four hours, his working day has been longer than the permitted maximum of 11 hours; or that the interval of rest before the day on which he exceeded four hours was shorter than the statutory 11 hours. In either case it would appear that he has been acting illegally without breaking the law.
A rare find
Here, indeed, would be a rare find for the prolepticists and those people who, contrary to most scientific opinion, believe that the future can influence the past. It would not be so novel for the legislators who are not above making a law retrospective if it suits them.
Where the legal experts are likely to find themselves more busy is in sorting out the nice distinction between "statutory breaks—on duty" and "statutory and other breaks—off duty". The column under the first of these headings is apparently intended to apply only to the statutory break of at least half an hour for "rest and refreshment" after the driver has been on duty for 5+ hours.
In some mysterious way the driver who has rest and refreshment on duty is not so rested and refreshed as if he had been off duty. What is on and what is off is not at all clear. The driver who fills in his record form while resting and sucks his indelible pencil for refreshment may consider himself on duty although the duty is to the Ministry rather than to his employer.
He may be regarded as on duty while he remains in any way responsible for his vehicle. In these circumstances, however, he could be placing a bet over the telephone or playing cards in a cafe or chatting up the girl behind the counter. It seems strange that while following these amiable pursuits he should simultaneously be engaged in an occupation so exacting as to require an absolute and statutory limit of 11 hours on the working day.