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VI FALLACY Thank you for your analysis item on the
Page 22
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Vehicle Inspectorate Effectiveness Report CM14-20 Novi. You repeat the fallacy at the heart of the VI policy, that "as vehicles get older they are more likely to fail their annual test".
Looking at engineering issues, and ignoring cost issues, any fleet of new vehicles starts life with a period of infant unreliability caused by errors in design, manufacture and assembly.
After these are worked through this fleet will run for many years at a constant level of reliability, even when very elderly. As the fleet becomes genatric, major but predictable issues such as cab rot or chassis fatigue will ultimately cause its withdrawal from service. Thus there is no correlation between the age of a vehicle and the likelihood of it suffering a roadworthiness defect on the journey between its home base and the VI Testing Station. This explains why 21% of one-year-old vehicles fail their initial annual tests: they were not roadworthy when they left their home bases.
The maintenance systems of some operators of old vehicles are not up to the task. Exactly the same applies to the maintenance systems of some operators of one-year-old vehicles.
It follows that the operator's maintenance system is the key issue, not the age of his vehicles.
These simple facts were ignored by the VI recently when it advised the Traffic Commissioner to call us to public inquiry. Our protests to the TAN civil servants were to no avail, and the PI went steaming ahead like some giant oil tanker out of control and heading for the rocks.
The VI witnesses demonstrated their level of competence by failing to arrive by the appointed time, and their performance did not improve.
The decision of the TO was to take no action against us.
Our elderly fleet has an average of nearly 14 years. We were able to demonstrate without challenge that on VI data, our initial fail rate on annual test is one quarter of the national average.
Likewise, on roadside inspections, our fail rate is one half of the national average.
Normally, the worst 2% of operators nationally can be expected to be called to public inquiry; our performance must be close to being among the best 2% of operators.
But the VI system is based on the vehicle age fallacy, and in our case it was implemented with incompetence. There is only one word which describes the system currently operated by the VI and the TAN—that word is Tyranny.
FE Gilman, C&,G Concrete, Stamford,
LIACS.
See Industry News Extra, pages 14-15.