Owner-drivers Under Criti c ism nWNER-DRIVERS of heavy vehicles la/ have come
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in for some harsh criticism from Mr. Thomas Moore,Chief Constable of Nottingham. Operators of big fleets, on the other hand; have been given a pat on the back and Nottingham Road. Safety Council have approved both! • .
Mr. Moore remarked on the two 'types of operator when he submitted .to the council statistics cornpiled from a series of spot checks on heavy.vehicles4nade in the city. To ensure that owners based outside Nottingham had their vehicles examined, too, the checkpoints were set up on University Boulevard, which carries trunk traffic to Birmingham and the WeSt.
In all, 85 were halted and scrutinized, and more than half had defects of one sort or another, said the report. Four lorries were immediately made the Subject of prohibition orders—all Of them ownerdriven. A further 38 vehicles had defects which took a few days to put right.
The Chief Constable said that he bad found that owner-drivers were committing the worst offences. "It's not the big operators who are to blame." And the vehicle owners formed a good cross-section of the country.
APRIL REGISTRATIONS DOWN
REGISTRATIONS of new commercial vehicles in April, at 23,710, were 7,509 fewer than in the preceding month. This was largely because of a 4,661 drop in the number of new goods vehicles. The total of new goods vehicles registered in January-April, at 79,369, however, was 18,217 higher than in the comparable period of 1959.
Details are given in the accompanying table.