VOSA staff should be more experienced
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I HAVE JUST READ your article regarding load security in Scotland and the interpretation of the law. It is health and safety gone daft!
Anyone with experience in loading fertiliser will tell you that a ratchet strap is useless for this purpose. Quite simply, fertiliser is either prilled or granulated and as the vehicle travels down the road it acts like a fluid: if you apply pressure to a bag of fertiliser by means of a strap, it displaces the product under the strap. So, after a few miles, they become slack and could fall off into the path of a following vehicle. The problem is that VOSA inspectors do not understand that on the back of a vehicle the load behaves in a different way as it is a dynamic situation, not a static one.
Unfortunately, the people who impose the rules in the UK invariably have no experience of the job. If we were in Germany, their equivalent to VOSA requires 10 years' experience as a driver first. A pity we don't apply the same standard here.
Julian Cartwright-Taylor MD
JA Cox & Son