POINTS ON PROCEDURE
Page 16
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• Commercial Motor should be congratulated on its article on weighing facilities in Warwickshire (CM 22-28 September) and its shortfalls of accuracy.
In the same issue, attention and publicity was paid to the recent Department of Transport installation at Ross on Wye on the A40 trunkroad. I am sure all operators were pleased to read of how quickly vehicles can be weighed at this facility, but how many operators are aware of what the showpiece of legislation actually involves?
A constable directs his chosen traffic into the nearside southbound weighbridge whereupon, having been weighed, each vehicle has a poster stuck across its nearside windscreen totally4 obliterating an area of at least 12" (300mm) x 18" (450mtn). The vehicles are then allowed to continue its original duty, each displaying a large number.
Within less than one mile (1.6km) of this site a wooden hut is perched behind the crash barriers approaching the bridge. Until someone (i.e. one of the Trade Associations or someone like yourselves) clarifies the situation it can only be assumed that the person manning this wooden hut is checking the readings taken at the site against those received in the hut from load cells laid in the carriageway itself. In theory this would register any abnormal axle weights that may have skipped the normal weighbridge facility.
At this point I must stress that I in no way condone overloading, but being a CPC and HGV Class 1 licence holder and a mechanic over the past 20 years in the industry, I have the following observations: 0 At an annual MOT, why not instruct drivers to remove any stickers or flags from windscreens or any article affecting forward vision.
0 During the recent miners' strike identity numbers were removed from windscreens by the police and put down onto the lower grill panels in order to satisfy vision requirements. 0 Local villagers near Wilton roundabout have just been refused permission by the Department of Transport to install crossing lights to get children to school on the opposite side of this busy road. So what thought for safety?
0 In an experiment being operated by the Department of Transport and the local Trading Standards, co-operation is sought from the hauliers. Would it not be prudent for the appropriate bodies to cooperate with the hauliers more? Checking axle weights is a very unique facility which is only available for operators on Department of Transport weighbridges. In the majority of places there are no axle weighing facilities, other than at roadside checks, whereupon it is too late to find out what the axle weights are because it inevitably ends up with a prosecution.
Trevor Probert, Littledeara, Gloucestershire.
KWIK-FIT NOT FRANCHISED
• Your view of franchising in the 1-7 December issue features Kwik-Fit as a franchise operation. It isn't.
All UK centres are companyowned and company-controlled. Northern Ireland centres are run in co-operation with Hampden Homecare. The majority of the European centres are company-owned and controlled; there is a franchise operation involving 17 centres which commenced operations in France in the middle of 1988.
Harry Shepherd,
Retail Marketing and Communication, London WIN 7PA.
USE YOUR REST TIME WISELY
• With reference to your reader's letter "Is anyone legal" (CM 1 Dec), may I say that we have thousands of customers (drivers), using TACH:TRAK Drivers Hours Calculator, who can keep themselves legal every day. The flexibility of the hours regulations, however, must be an advantage to an operator/ driver, provided they note what they are doing.
Surely rest breaks are what they mean, for rest. Driving for five minutes does not meal the driver needs 15 minutes' break, or have I misunderstoo your reader? Rest regulations, I thought, were drafted to relieve a driver from fatigue al the wheel, for the safety of th public and other road users.
The regulations allow many combinations for rest, but it should not be abused, or tighter, less flexible, measure: will be introduced. Who will IN the losers then, I wonder!.
Ron Stevenson
Managing Director Visect, Pill, Bristol