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Vosa and police I are bureaucracies and act as such
Page 26
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ROBERT ROWETH'S rather pious letter (CM 2 August) defends his fellow bureaucrats with a little too much zeal.
To begin with, it is not a mark against operators that they have avoided digital tachographs up to now.Their introduction was such a fiasco, with manufacturers demanding postponement after postponement,that it is hardly surprising there was widespread distrust of the new technology. The historical background, with memories of the early clockwork and later the first electronic tachographs, hardly inspired confidence either. Digitachs have proved to be less problematic than feared— though not problem-free—but transport people have long memories.
The present day hours' regulations are easy in theory, but much more difficult to comply with in practice.There are still plenty of pitfalls for the unwary and drivers have much else to occupy their minds during the working day. Magistrates are quite often horrified when the regulations are explained hypothetically as they might apply to their own activities.
The vast bulk of infringements that we see are simple mistakes and not wilful flouting of the law. There isn't a queue of wouldbe replacements outside the employer's door,so a driver does not feel pressure —real or imagined —or an inclination to stick his neck out for someone else's benefit. For UK drivers,a deliberate and serious breach of the regulations is a rarity. If the cock-ups were filtered out from the conspiracies, prosecutions would be too few to mention, but I still get called in during the late autumn to act as expert witness to a whole series of cases and they invariably are —as one of CM's interviewees (Jury Out on Spot Fines, 2 August) confirms— a long way from home.
Both Vosa and the police are bureaucracies and cannot be expected to behave differently from any other bureaucracy. especially when under pressure to meet the inevitable government targets.
Again,training for drivers is more difficult to organise in practice than appears at first sight. We provide driver seminars, usually on Saturday mornings, but that can still mean walking past upwards of half a million pounds worth of equipment standing idle to reach the office. Drivers aren't so plentiful that cost can be avoided and margins aren't so generous that it can easily be borne.
A fine culture has grown over the past decade or so, with the result that the relationship between enforcing agencies of the state and the general public is essentially predatory in nature. Transport operators and drivers are more exposed than most.
Ralph Ingham-Johnson Cirrus Fleet Services By e-mail