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CHOKING TO DEATH
Here's a simple exercise for all truck operators: clasp your hands around your windpipe, and slowly squeeze...gradually increase the pressure until you begin to turn blue. Self-strangulation may not be your idea of a leisure pursuit, but it's probably the most effective way to describe what running a truck will feel like in the year 2031 (see News Extra, page 11). Why? Because according to the Government's latest road traffic forecasts, traffic volumes in the UK will have increased by 60%, and rush-hour journey times on urban motorways will have all but doubled. Forget JIT; it will be a case or TBL—too bloody late. And to add to the problem, there are still millions in this country who think that the way to solve congestion is to get rid of all those big nasty lorries. They remain blissfully unaware that if you were to take the freight currently being carried by the nation's 75,300 top-weight artics and put it on the back of 7.5-tonners you'd need 444,270 more trucks to do the same work (and an extra 3,71 5km of road to accommodate them). As the HGV parc continues to shrink the number of cars in the UK grows unchecked. We all know the real cause of congestion is the motor car, but such is our love affair with our cars that we're happy to hear economists quoting booming car registrations as a measure of the country's industrial virility. We have to break our mindset of car dependency. But to do that we have to lose our dependency on the car. Whether the Government does it by punitive taxation, higher fuel duty, road tolling, blanket car bans, subsidised public transport— or all of the above—the stark Fact remains that if we don't halt the growth of the car none of us will be going anywhere.