The Week in Parliament
Page 40
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No General Increase in Number of Trailers Allowed
FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
I T was not intended to use the new powers under the Road Traffic Bill to increase generally the number of trailers a vehicle might draw, Mr. John Hay, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, assured the committee considering the Bill. The amendment to the law proposed by the Bill would simply enable the Minister, by regulation, to prescribe that, in certain circumstances, the number of trailers might be increased from one to two.
There had been a number of cases in which difficulty had been caused because there had been some doubt as to whether a particular combination of vehicles comprised one trailer or two trailers, said Mr. Hay. A particular case in point was that of the articulated vehicle which had broken down. Special provision had had to be made to enable such a vehicle to be treated as a single trailer.
Another case was that of the vehicle known technically as a "towing ambulance "—a device designed to enable one vehicle to be drawn by another. It had been held in the High Court that a towing ambulance of this kind was a trailer to which the Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations applied. As a result a number of authorities had some doubts whether a towing ambulance with another vehicle supported on it might not be one trailer but two trailers.
The Ministry had now advised them that it did not think these doubts were well founded, but some police forces had been reluctant to use towing ambulances.
Earlier Mr, Graham Page (Cons., Crosby) had said that if the Minister was going to make lorry-ways out of London, through the narrow high streets of the villages of London, and was going to authorize two large trailers on the end of a lorry, he dreaded to think what was going to happen to those roads, and to the motorist who wanted to pass. It was a terrifying business to try to pass a lorry with two laden trailers.
The committee accepted without discussion an amendment moved by Mr. Hay dealing with people between the ages Of 19 and 21 who are entitled to hold a substantive licence to drive an articulated vehicle but do not actually do so. Mr. Hay pointed out that the Minister was being given power to make regulations to raise the minimum driving age for an articulated vehicle from 17 to 21, but people within these two ages who already held the appropriate substantive licence would be allowed to continue to drive.
This amendment put on the same basis drivers who were entitled to a licence but had not taken one out.