T.R.T.A. Fight New Loading Ban
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THE Traders' Road Transport Association have protested against proposed regulations to prohibit the loading and unloading of goods vehicles in Slough for two two-hour periods in the morning and afternoon.
Slough has been selected by the Ministry of Transport for an experiment to determine the relative value of various safety measures. In a letter to the Ministry, Mr. R. E. G. Brown, secretary of the London and Home Counties Division of the T.R.T.A., says that it is difficult to understand how the ban would further the aims of the Slough experiment.
No attempt has been made, he adds, to find out the nature of the goods traffic movement in the town. A ban would deny reasonable and necessary access to premises, which was a right expressly recognized in the Road Traffic Act, 1930.
The regulations were, however, being made under the London Traffic Act, 1924, which did not contain the same safeguard. Approval of the 'regulations would establish an important precedent which could seriously prejudice the principle of reasonable access which had formerly applied.
WORKERS WANT NEW INSURANCE CLAUSE WITH the return of British Road VY Services' vehicles to private ownership, men were again being compelled to work up to 17 hours at a time, Mr. Frank Allaun, prospective Labour candidate for Salford East, alleged last Sunday. He described investigations he had made with the co-operation of the Transport and General Workers' Union into long-distance driving conditions on the Manchester—London A6 trunk road.
Mr. I. Wood, north-western commercial road transport secretary of the Union, said that a delegate meeting had given instructions that insurance companies should be asked to insert a clause in policies safeguarding themselves against accidents involving men who had been working longer than the legal maximum of 11 hours.
TRAVELS AS MATE TO HEAR COMPLAINTS
rinvestigate complaints that free hauliers were competing unfairly with British Road Services by exploiting their drivers, Mr. K. Russell, an urban councillor of Brierley Hill, is to make a journey as a mate on a B.R.S. lorry from Birmingham to Sheffield tonight.
"We shall stop at transport cafes en route to hear the complaints of the private-enterprise drivers and to study their conditions of service," Mr. Russell said. "If I find these allegations are true, I shall make strong representations to the Ministry of Transport for stricter control over private transport undertakings."