The danger of longer hours
Page 63
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I FEEL OBLIGED to comment on the suggestions from various sources to increase the length of the driver's working day. It has taken years of effort to get it reduced to a fairly safe and sensible limit.
lain Sherriff, in his leader (CM, March 24), falls into the trap of thinking that should the driving hours be increased, drivers will no longer get delayed or stuck in traffic hold-ups. The odds of getting held up after say, nine and a half hours, are exactly the same as they would be after eight, and all we would hear would be the employers crying, "If only he had been able to drive for ten and a half hours." So where is the line to be drawn?
Even more retrograde thinking, surely, is represented in the remarks of the RHA's Bob Duffy, who actually suggests that a driver working away from home should have his rest period reduced to eight hours.
A little thought would indicate that after a driver had packed up, found somewhere to get washed and had his dinner, he would be lucky to get seven hours' rest, allowing for the fact that he would want to wash and have at least a cup of tea before starting in the morning.
Just imagine asking an office or factory worker finishing at four in the afternoon, if he would come in to start again at midnight!
This sort of suggestion seems a relic of the bad old days, when accidents, often fatal, very often resulted from lack of sleep and extreme fatigue. This is not the opinion of an armchair theorist, I first drove a commercial vehicle forty-two years ago, and still drive an artic reefer today.
Now that speed limits have been increased, an increase in hours would extend the mileage it is possible to do in a shift considerably, but just what would drivers get out of it in an industry that isn't keen on parting with money at the best of times?
EUGENE GEORGE CORKE, London W13.