FTA hits at AA on 10 pc overload allegation
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Article painted `zunvarranted and irresponsible picture' of road transport industry
• "Unwarranted", "irresponsible" and a "gross distortion of the true situation" are terms used in the Freight Transport Association's answer to the recent allegations by the Automobile Association that 10 per cent of commercial vehicles are overloaded (CM July 7).
In a strongly worded statement to the AA's director-general, Mr Alec Drurie, the FTA has condemned the Association for giving a "totally unwarranted and irresponsible picture of all but a tiny minority of the road transport industry" and demands that the opportunity be given for it to reply to the charges in the next edition of the AA's magazine Drive.
'So many errors' The allegations were made in an article in the summer edition of the magazine and contained, says the FTA, so many e Tors, omissions and misleading conclusions as to undermine completely its credibility as a serious contribution to what is accepted as an important problem. The FTA then goes on to emphasize its "more obvious criticisms".
The article stated that "collisions with heavy commercial vehicles cause at least half of all deaths among occupants of cars and light vans — even though lorries put up only one-tenth the mileage covered by cars and vans".
The Road Research Laboratory Report (LR 316), on which this statement was apparently based, in fact stated "a high proportion (at least 50 per cent) of the light vehicle occupants killed in collisions are the result of hitting a commercial vehicle". The FTA points out that, in fact, in over half of the recorded car/goods vehicle collisions, the car ran into the back of the goods vehicle.
These figures had no direct relevance to the question of the safety hazard of overloaded vehicles, maintains the FTA.
The Drive report quoted a further RRL survey as showing that one in five lorries had been illea.allv modifie4 to carry bigger loads. The words underlined were a gratuitous addition to the official report, which simply stated that 20 per cent of the 6000 vehicles "had been modified to permit additional load to be carried". The assumption that the conversions were illegal was completely unwarranted.
Throughout the whole article, says the FTA, the distinction between vehicle overload and axle overload, fundamental to the evaluation of statistics on this subject, was made only once. Still more important was the distinction between gross overloading and marginal overloading, absolutely vital to a genuine appraisal of road safety considerations and which again was mentioned only briefly in the article.
The article commenced by saying "No one will ever know for certain just how many of Britain's 1,600,000 lorries take to the roads each day with loads that are overweight." This was almost exactly one million more than actually existed — unless light vans built on private car chassis were included, which hardly warranted the description "lorries", says the FTA, adding that this was a good example of many instances where the article gave the impression of a sensational rather than a factual approach.
Lack of guidance The bias of the article was further emphasized, the FTA maintains, in that apparently no attempt was made to seek the guidance and opinions of people in the transport industry. "Consequently, there was no reference whatsoever to the care exercised by the vast majority of operators to whom safety considerations were paramount, nor to the significance to such operators of the potential loss of their operators' licences which was a very real deterrent against overloading."