Heavy Goods Driving Licences?
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
SPECIAL heavy goods vehicle licences for drivers of vehicles exceeding three tons unladen are proposed by the leaders of the Conservative Parliamentary Transport Committee in their amendments to the Road Traffic Bill. These special licences should be held in addition to ordinary driving licences, they say, and should be issued on terms prescribed in special regulations laid clowit by the Minister.
"R" plates for new drivers, restricting them to not more than 50 m.p.h. for the first year and obliging them to take new tests after speeding, careless or dangerous driving offences, is another suggestion put forward by this group.
The amendments appear under the names of Mr. R. Gresham Cooke (Twickenham), !qr. R. W. Elliott (Newcastle North) and Mr. Geoffrey Wilson (Truro), the leading officers of the backbenchers' committee. All three have been appointed to the standing committee which will begin to examine the Bill, clause by clause, on Thursday, May 3.
Mr. Marples also laid his first series of amendments to the Bill a few days ago and indicated several interesting ideas his department have in mind.
First, he proposes to rewrite most of the original Act concerning parking places on highways. This is to give him
a freer hand to use new apparatus for controlling parking. One suggestion is that he will put devices on.walls or lamp standards where pavements are narrow —and that the devices will not be in the form of meters, but machines which issue tickets for money.
A further amendment laid by Mr. Marples gives way on the suggestion that licences should be open to revocation if a court case divulges evidence of disease or disability. If it appears to a court that these drawbacks make a defendant a road danger. Mr. Marples proposes that the court shall have power to notify the licensing authority in whose area the accused lives, and also the authority by whom the licence was granted. Such line of communication does not now exist.
Mr. Marples also proposes to empower local authorities outside London to carry out traffic experiments for parking and congestion, etc. If the amendment is passed, they will have the same powers as the Metropolitan and City police have in London.
Messrs. Gresham Cooke, Elliott and Wilson also have amendments seeking to have the registration books of vehicles being scrapped surrendered to "the appropriate local authority," and for sellers of vehicles registered for use to declare to buyers the name and address of insurers.