SPOT A BELCHER WIN A METRO!
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picture the scene. Our old friend Joe Soop haulier is reclining indolently behind his rickety desk. The office door is flung open. Enter the company's Head of Vehicle Engineering (Stan the fitter) with a newspaper article on the RAC's latest campaign to encourage Britain's motorists to report polluting trucks to the VI. "Tchaal", snorts Joe. "It's worse than fbloody Gestapo!" The metaphor may be excessive but it's hard not to see this latest "cleanup" campaign as yet another call to the nation's busybodies to stick their noses into someone else's business. Unfortunately we can just imagine what some drivers will do when an "empowered citizen" insists on taking down their details. According to the country's second most popular motoring organisation: "Motorists feel they are being blamed where the real problem lies elsewhere. Cars are responsible for only 7% of road transport's contribution to black smoke." In other words, it's the fault of the nation's 400,000 commercial vehicles. Strangely, the RAC's campaign press release says nothing about the environmental effect of Britain's 22 million cars in terms of lead, benzine, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and aromatic hydrocarbons. And what about the 1_53 million diesel cars within that figure? It's CM's experience that small diesel engines are more than capable of producing their own fair share of black smoke. Recruiting 35 million motorists to act as the VI's eyes
out on the road has a dubious logic. At best it will
raise expectations to an unrealistic level—as if each call would send a crack VI squad rushing to apprehend said belcher. According to the VI:"What we currently do is write to the operator and ask him to explain the condition of his vehicle. So if it's implied that every operator will receive a visit that's not the case." Only if an operator can't come up with a plausible response will a fleet check take place. But what operator is going to say "Oh yes it's still chucking out carbon in great stair rods. And you know, we haven't done a damn thing about it either!" Cleaner commercial vehicles will only come out of a properly funded emissions quality programme that starts with a more stringent annual test and is backed up by enough roadside spot checks to deter the would-be belchers. What we don't need is a 35 million hypocritical supergrasses.