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ONE popular impression that has stayed remarkably fresh over the years is that the lorry driver, and especially the long-distance man, is invariably kind and courteous as well as skilful. He has earned himself the title of knight of the road, and there is rarely any doubt that he has deserved it. The tributes have been paid time and again in Parliament and the Press, at public meetings and in general conversation. What is so often said is certainly genuinely felt and justified. We are all
road users. We have the opportunity of checking the opinion at first hand, and we know from experience that it is right.
.But when all this is admitted, the lorry driver cannot consider himself above criticism. He must run the risk that the public may change their minds, fairly or otherwise, and come to feel very differently about him. For the moment, I am not concerned with whether or not the popular impression of the lorry driver is any nearer to the truth than the image of the policeman projected on the television screen. In a sense the image is just as important as the reality it claims to represent, and it is sound policy to keep that image from deteriorating.
The tributes usually paid to the lorry driver are sadly different from many of the comments that have been made during the campaign against diesel smoke, and especially during the second reading in the House of Commons last Friday of the Diesel Fumes Bill sponsored by Mr. Rupert Speir, M.P. Although, at the end of the discussion, Mr. Speir withdrew what was in some ways a curious measure, the sting remained. Mr. John Hay, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Transport, virtually promised that some of Mr. Speir's proposals would be included in the Road Traffic Bill and said that the Ministry and the police would make a concerted drive against vehicles with smoking exhausts.
It may not be an uncommon experience for the lorry driver to be harried by the authorities for one reason or another; but not many people get to hear about it. Last week's debate was given fairly wide publicity. The public as a whole learned that the man they had come to regard as a shining example, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, was apparently to be considered, by the police and by the Government, as their main target. This must, one imagines, have caused some damage to the popular image of the lorry driver, for comparatively few people would bother to analyse why they were taking so much interest in this particular problem.
RECENT events and reports have combined to produce considerable concern about the pollution of the atmosphere and the effect of smoke upon the lungs. One might he excused for believing that there is a world-wide plot for poisoning the human race. In such a context, any agency that is responsible for pollution or smoke is regarded as a public enemy. The inclination is to condemn it out of hand as obnoxious, to accept whatever evidence is avait, able to prove this, and to ignore any evidence that may point in the opposite direction.
When one medical body comes to the conclusion that smoking is a cause of many lung complaints, the people who had believed this all the time redouble their attack on the cigarette. When another medical body is unable to find any specific threat to health from diesel fumes alone in the concentration in which they are found in the streets, the same or other propagandists refuse to be reassured. Fear is the best weapon in their campaign, and they will not lightly give it up. There can be little doubt that the interest in Mr. Speir's Bill would have been far less had not people associated it in their minds with the hydrogen bomb, smog and the recent report on smoking.
Mr. Speir himself, it should be added in fairness, did not base his case mainly, if at all, on the possible effect of diesel fumes on health, but rather on their unpleasantness and on the danger to traffic He was on safe ground here, for it can hardly be denied that the fumes constitute a nuisance. The main problem is to estimate its extent and to find who exactly are responsible, so that measures can be taken against them. This is the problem that the Government have set themselves by accepting that they should have power to test the amount of smoke that a vehicle is emitting and by their plans for special road checks to trap the offenders.
The blame has been laid at more than one door. At various times people criticized the Construction and Use Regulations for not favouring the preferable power-toweight ratio; the vehicle manufacturers for not making proper provision to dispose of the smoke in such a way as not to cause annoyance; the engine manufacturers for not making good enough engines; the fuel producers for supplying a product of an uncertain standard; the operators for overloading their venicles or for not maintaining them properly: and finally the drivers for misusing the vehicles, especially on hills.
THERE may be other offenders or scapegoats, but these are enough to be getting on with. The list may also make it seem unfair that the full weight of the law is to fall on the actual drivers and (no doubt), through them, the vehicle operators even in circumstances where the culprit may be somebody else who is allowed to go scot-free. However, the penalty would be delayed rather than avoided completely. The supplier whose customers continually find themselves penalized for mechanical defects of various kinds would soon notice a considerable falling-off in his business.
There is little point in any case in trying to shift the blame from one interest to another. Most of the people concerned, whether it is any fault of theirs or not, have recognized the need for a careful investigation of the problem and have already come up with some useful information and advice. Their work, which has been well publicized, will now continue with a sense of urgency.
Priority should perhaps be given to repairing the broken image of the commercial vehicle driver, who will be the first to come up against the new sternness of the law. If there are inveterate offenders, it will be a good thing to find them out and discourage them. Possibly their number is small, for even one badly smoking vehicle on a busy road is likely to be seen by scores or hundreds of drivers, who are left with the firm impression that every other lorry is at fault. If every commercial driver can be made aware of the importance of not producing smoke, the damage that may have been done to his reputation should soon heal.