Intelligibility gap
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IN MOST activities, and road transport is no exception, scientific and technological advances create a widening gap between those in the know and those who are not. Even in the field of literature, where one might least expect it, adepts in the mysteries of functionalism — as recent arguments within the universities have shown — have removed themselves far beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person who just likes a good read.
Transport studies are bound to become more recondite as the prospects widen. Improvements to vehicles open up new possibilities for their better and more economic use. Techniques for handling and distribution have been studied and refined to the inevitable state where a new vocabulary has had to be invented, with its equally inevitable but more regrettable barrier of initials to baffle the uninitiated.
In the meantime, the less ambitious or less academic operator in a small way ofbusiness continues to tread much as he has always done. The language he speaks and the procedures he follows would be completely intelligible to his predecessors in the early days of the industry.
It would be wrong, however, to suggest that he is a relic of the past, an example of a species doomed to disappear in the Process of evolution. He is as 3daptable as anybody else, but
sees no reason to adopt changes unless they are imposed by law or he can see their advantages for his particular business.
One problem may seem greater to him than to many other people. Unless he has been operating long enough to establish his grandfather rights, he has had to pass the examination for his certificate of professional competence. It is an obligation that he resents, particularly if he fails.
Except for tests at school, he may never have taken an examination. However carefully the questionnaire is framed — and much effort has been put into simplifying its structure — he may still be baffled. His mind does not work in that way. He may know the legal and other requirements affecting his own business, but has difficulty in recognising them when they are presented as part of a system.
Here is a point of contact with the general public. Some publicity was given recently to a case in which the North-western Licensing Authority refused to renew the licence of a furniture remover in Llandudno.
Readers could immediately relate to the issue. Even if they had not attempted the task themselves, they would know of examples where a householder had hired a van and moved his own furniture. He did not have to pass a special examination and could not see how it would have helped.
The professional remover, it was conceded, would do the work better. His superiority is due to his training on the job and his subsequent experience. It would be reassuring if he had a qualification, particularly one that was related to removals, but most of his customers would not consider this essential.
Whatever public attention it may have aroused, the Llandudno case is of no significance within the industry itself. But it does provide a useful illustration of the gulf between the more sophisticated section of the industry and the operators at the other end of the scale whose problems are more likely to attract sympathy from without.
There has been a similar development in the prolonged argument about the heavy lorry. The experts who have been with the subject a long time, to whichever lobby they belong, no longer speculate on the benefits of doing away with the goods vehicle. They accept that it is here to stay.
Their discussions are mainly on the ways and means by which changes in lorry design and scope can be permitted or prevented. They have to be qualified to deal plausibly with such matters as weight distribution, road wear, bridge capabilities and noise levels. Inevitably they move farther away from the general public.
Here again the media play their part. Most people without special knowledge who have something to say on the subject of the goods vehicle are opposed to it. They have no inhibitions about expressing their views and find the correspondence columns of the press convenient for their purpose.
It may indicate the strength of their feelings that they often break into verse. A typical
contribution in the Daily Telegraph began with the following couplet:
I'm in a queue of traffic and I'm crawling at the tail, And up front I see a load that needs to go by rail.
The road lobby, which needless to say he attacks a few lines further on, has obviously. made no impression on this member of the public. He assumes that because the vehicle in front is holding him up, the goods it is carrying ought to go by some other means of transport. It is not within his brief to ask whether the railways can actually handle this particular consignment.
Perhaps the rail lobby should not be much happier. In spite of extensive advertising in expensive media, it still does not enter the head of the versifier that, if he left his car at home and travelled by rail, he would not have to bother about the irritating obstacle.
He is as enduring a type as the small haulier. His hymn of hate could have appeared in any newspaper at any time since the beginning of the sustained controversy about the heavy lorry, probably when discussions about weight increases were linked with plans for entering the EEC.
The expert arguments then put forward on either side now seem crude when compared with the discussion following the Armitage report and the White Paper. But no difference can be detected in the components, or the level, of the flow of vituperation, except that the identification of the heavy lorry with the juggernaut has now found its way into the dictionary.