MODERN ROADS SAVE LIVES

12th November 1965, Page 152

12th November 1965

Page 152

Page 152, 12th November 1965 — MODERN ROADS SAVE LIVES

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Keywords : Road Transport, Tourism, Travel, Road Traffic Safety, Traffic Collision, Salter Report, Disaster / Accident

Is it the roads or the use of them that cause accidents ? No doubt the responsibility is shared. There will never be agreement on the exact proportion. Official opinion may be tempted to blame the user. Recent cuts or delays in the road programme draw more attention than ever to the fact that construction is falling farther and farther behind the increase in the number of vehicles, especially private cars. Legislation or threatened legislation provides new or heavier penalties for road offences and demands ever greater skill and self-control from drivers. If they can by such means be reduced to an elite remnant, perhaps the accident rate will begin to fall and there will be one reason less for demanding better roads.

Official thinking in the United States is taking the opposite direction in spite of a death rate of 48,000 a year and an injury rate of at least Mr. John Connor, the Secretary of Commerce, has published the results of one recent study which leads to the conclusion that driving on the wide, modern roads of the interstate highway system is between twice and three times as safe as travelling on other roads. By his reckoning those interstate highways now open to traffic would save 3,500 lives this year and the figure would rise to 8,000 a year when the entire system was completed. These results were being obtained because engineers had rejected the emotional and widely held, but fallacious, belief that almost all accidents were caused by driving errors or failure through carelessness or irresponsibility.

n ALL DRIVERS MUST BE HELPED

Mr. Connor has also reported on another study which had shown that an entirely different group" of drivers was involved in aecidents each year. Disqualifying those who had two or more accidents in a year would have virtually no effect on the accident rate for the following year. All drivers must be helped.. This could be done by reducing the difficulty of driving or by giving the driver better tools to use. The paramount desire to make things easier for the motorist and other road users is a refreshing contrast to the scolding tone often adopted by those persons in authority in Britain. The road problem in the two countries may be different but it is a sign of despair when so much attention is being paid to restrictions and bans. The increasingly high standards demanded of road users are an indictment of the road system rather than of the people who find the standards too difficult.

None of this invalidates the need for proper vehicle maintenance and the need for proper observance of the regulations governing the conduct of drivers. The problem constituted one of the key points in the analysis of the Geddes report given to the Institute of Transport on Monday by Mr. K. C. Turner, president, Traders Road Transport Association (see page 150). The proposals in the report, said Mr. Turner, must be judged by their longterm and not their short-term effects which he agreed might in some respects be unsatisfactory. But a serious risk to public safety, unlike other short-term disadvantages, could not be accepted even for the transitional period needed to tide over the shock of abolition of the licensing system.

There must be a major increase in enforcement staff and machinery before the Geddes report was put into effect, said Mr. Turner. He went on to make another associated reservation. It puzzled him that, after rejecting the principle of quantitative licensing, the Geddes Committee should not have considered an alternative system based on quality. An entry qualification to the road haulage industry, designed to test the applicant's knowledge of transport law, costing and so on, would in his opinion have been entirely consistent with the rest of the report and would certainly have helped to promote the status of transport.

Whether a similar qualificatim would be required of what are no described as C licence holders was lef in doubt. Presumably the abolition o licensing, by making all operator: equal, would require them to confornto the same standards. An entrancc examination into road haulage already established in one or twc European countries. Something oi the kind was suggested for Britain by the Road Haulage Association in in original evidence to the Geddes Committee. Whether it would be practicable without considerable expense and delay to extend the system to every trader wishing to run his own vehicles is another matter.

DIFFICULT PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT LIKELY

Quite properly Mr. Turner placed the main emphasis on road safety when considering the short-term effects of abolishing licensing. He also acknowledged the distinct possibility that there would be a very difficult period of adjustment and that the main brunt would be borne by hauliers deprived of whatever protection they had previously received from the licensing system. " But all major changes share this common feature was Mr. Turner's verdict.

Perhaps he dismissed the point too lightly. He appeared to admit that many hauliers were likely to lose business or become the.victirris of ratecutting. This would be a temporary embarrassment for some; others would go out of business. Should there 'be compensation? Even the diminishing number of Socialists who still call for nationalization are agreed that the dispossessed hauliers ought to receive fair Payment. The Conservatives—members of the Party most likely to implement the Geddes report if at all—can hardly consider their obligation less strong especially to a haulier who at their prompting may have paid a good price for a business with a special A licence 10 years ago.

MODERN ROADS SAVE LIVES

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