Safety and hours: PIMA hits out again
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MR. DENIS QUIN, secretary of the PV0A, said this week that the bus and coach industry was pleased that the Government White Paper on Road Safety endorsed the PV0A's recommendations to the Minister of Transport.
These were for a full programme of scientific research into road accidents and instilling into road users a positive attitude to road safety.
The Association had made these comments in connection with the Minister's proposals to reduce working hours for drivers of public service vehicles, in the interests of road safety.
Mr. Quin continued: "The new White Paper is, in fact, the most complete condemnation of the Minister's own action with regard to drivers' hours." In considering the present well-tried law on driving hours she had "preferred to rely on haphazard observations, suppositions, hunches and downright prejudice, while sheltering behind an emotive argument of road safety."
Mr. Quin added: "Now that the Minister has publicly acknowledged the need to base safety precautions on scientifically established facts, we shall expect her to honour her undertaking before amending the law on driving hours. At present she is choosing to ignore the research that has been done regarding driver fatigue and is threatening to shackle the bus and coach industry in a way that can only result in higher fares and reduced services to the travelling public.
"She is confusing hours of work with statutory limits, framed to allow the flexibility which is vital to the operation of road transport.
"If her action is not based on supposition, it would seem to be a calculated move— one of many—to weaken the industry to assist her in her plans to nationalize it."