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Enforcement should be driven by safety, not the need to hit targets

19th July 2007, Page 30
19th July 2007
Page 30
Page 30, 19th July 2007 — Enforcement should be driven by safety, not the need to hit targets
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

TIM RI DYA RD'S article on graduated fixed penalty and deposit schemes (CM 12 July) is excellent and provides sound advice, but its publication is mistimed. It should have been held back until the autumn which, in the law enforcement calendar, is the silly season. Notice of prosecution has to be given within six months of an offence being discovered, and the public sector including Vosa and the police -carries out its annual appraisals in the last quarter of the fiscal year (January to March).

Officers of both organisations try to collect, or even contrive, all sorts of silly, technical offences during the autumn so they have a store of possible cases to add to the tally if needed to meet targets. Notice of prosecution is invariably issued during the first three months of the following year.

Truck drivers do not have the financial or legal resources to defend these cases effectively and often face the probability that an effective defence would cost more than the probable fine.That makes them an easy target, particularly when the officer concerned can read the vehicle's livery to establish the length of the journey to the court the cases I have described always seem to come up a long way from home.

I share Tim Ridyard's concern over the confused and ever-lengthening period of chart retention required of drivers. It means that operators will not discover infringements until they are ancient history and hours compliance will become much more difficult.

I find it difficult to avoid the suspicion that the DfTNosa are trying to make up time lost during that farcical introduction of digital tachographs by making analogue systems difficult to live with, while at the same time providing themselves with a much richer harvest of infringements to help with those targets.

Drivers' hours have to be restricted for obvious safety reasons and lines have to be drawn somewhere.That has to be managed and enforced. We all understand that. However, I have long suspected that the punctilious and often predatory enforcement of drivers' hours is driven more by bureaucratic self-protection than public safety.

When I first came into this business, as one of the late Walter Batstone's staff at NFC (he was chief engineer),maintenance standards were challenging. NFC used a benchmark for resource planning purposes of 200 hours per annum per vehicle. Modern vehicles need nothing like that to be kept up to scratch and a properly inspected and maintained vehicle is not going to have significant defects even just before inspection.

Fewer vehicle defects have led to more aggressive enforcement of drivers' hours.

Ralph Ingham-Johnson Cirrus Fleet Services Long Crensdon, Bucks


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