Letting the side down
Page 2
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Driving up North for Christmas, I spotted a truck with a rather unique approach to safety. It was a liquid tanker being pulled by an anonymous white Volvo on the M11. The tanker was once white too, until years of grime had turned it into a gentle shade of -overcast sky-. Written in the dirt on the back of the tanker was a safety warning: -Limited to 50mph".
While a small part of me raised a chuckle to admire the ingenuity of such a public safety warning who doesn't enjoy a bit of happy banter on the back of a dirty van?), thankfully a much larger part of me was horrified at this Lax approach to safety. Would it really hurt to give the tanker a wash every now and then? Would it reveal a more traditional speed warning sign if it did? Would I have been able to read this warning if it was dark? Would I have been able to read it if I wasn't three car lengths behind the tanker in the first place?
An incident such as this is a reminder that there are still operators out there with somewhat dubious approaches to safely running vehicles up and down the roads of the country. I understand that vehicles get dirty as part and parcel of the job — it's only natural. But to write a safety warning on the back of the vehicle in the dirt is Less an occupational hazard, more plumbing into the depths of laziness.
Whoever was running this vehicle needs to take into account that on a well-used motorway, such as the M11, that truck represents the public face of haulage.
Shoddy behaviour like this tars everyone with the same brush.
Christopher Walton