`No dodging responsibilities'
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• "If the Ministry of Transport had applied to quantity licensing and one or two other aspects of the Transport Bill half the courage and realism implicit in quality licensing we might have been on the threshold of a great transport policy," Mr. H. R. Featherstone, director of the Traders Road Transport Association, told the conference of the National Traders Traffic Association in London on Wednesday.
It had required courage to sweep away the old licensing system and replace it by one based purely on quality of transport. Here the United Kingdom had something to teach .many of the Continental countries which seemed to think that it was necessary to combine safety controls with a highly restrictive licensing system and control over haulage rates.
Quantity licensing on the other hand, was a retrograde step which, by seeking to force freight to rail, would lead to an inflexible transport system.
On transport managers' licences, Mr. Featherstone warned that this provision would not mean that a company could shuffle off its legal responsibility for the safe operation of vehicles by passing it to the transport manager. No company could evade its primary legal responsibility and the transport manager's licence would never be at risk unless the offence was sufficiently serious to warrant the company's operating licence first being revoked.