New Regulations in Autumn for Abnormal Loads
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FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
mEW Regulations governing the trans1 portation of abnormal loads by road will come into effect in the autumn. The Minister of Transport announced this in the Commons and was given power to exercise stricter control over the movement of abnormal loads on ordinary vehicles.
Mr. Marples told the House that with the new Regulations went a revision of the Motor Vehicles (Authorization of Special Types) General Order. Mobile cranes with projecting jibs, vehicles with abnormal overhanging loads and many other matters were being dealt with. He hoped to make and lay the Regulations before Parliament very shortly.
Power to make orders authorizing ordinary vehicles to • carry extra large loads was given to the Minister by the Standing Committee considering the Road Traffic Bill.
Moving an amendment designed to bring this about, Mr. John Hay, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said the immediate reason for the amendment was that the Department wished to control, but not to prohibit, the movement of certain indivisible wide loads by ordinary vehicles which complied with the Construction and Use Regulations. He pointed out that under present conditions such vehicles could move freely on the roads, subject only to notifying the police, while those that were specially constructed could be more tightly controlled because they had to be authorized by orders made by the MiniAttr under the 1960 Road Traffic Act.
"With the rapidly increasing density of traffic on the roads, the disruption of the normal flow of traffic must be avoided wherever possible, so the Minister seeks to extend his existing control over the movement of long, wide and projecting loads.
"While this will be mainly by requiring additional precautions and he advance notification of movement to the police where they are not already required, or, in the case of very long loads, by prohibiting movement except when authorized by an order; We want to provide that each journey of loads between 14 ft. and 20 ft. wide—which can Seriously disrupt traffic, and can take place on numerous occasions— should be individually authorized, although less formally than by the individual orders which apply to loads over 20-ft. wide."
The, amendment was agreed to without any opposition.