Safety is Our Problem
Page 42
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A' your journal is the leading road transport publica
tion in this country, I have observed with great dismay the almost complete lack of road safety information and advice you put forward. I know that you represent the employers' side of the road transport industry, and stricter safety measures and their enforcement might entail considerable expense to owners of vehicles, but surely you can bring a certain amount of impartiality to this urgent problem.
Last year, road casualties averaged 16 killed and nearly 600 injured every day. Are these figures not high enough to cause everyone in our industry the greatest concern? I know that private cars outnumber commercial vehicles by about six to one, but we must take responsibility for a high percentage of accidents.
Is it not time that everyone using the roads was made to take all possible care? The only alternative to persuasion is compulsion: the taking away of driving nit licences from drivers who speed, drink or drive dangerously, and the revocation of operators' licences for permitting these offences. Drastic action, but necessary.
If the British Transport Commission decided to publicize the number of road accidents compared to rail accidents, passenger transport by road would fall to an alarming extent to the benefit of the railways. Perhaps that is what most passenger transport operators deserve, for when a suggestion was made in a certain district a few weeks ago that "School Bus" markings should be put on buses travelling to and from school, only one operator, Barton Transport, Ltd., took advantage of the suggestion.
I am a lorry driver, and I am in the midst of this problem every working day. I know drastic action will have to be taken soon.
Rumney, Cardiff. EDGAR C. REED.