bird's eye
Page 35
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viewby the Hawk
• Sans clue
The letter from H. J. Webb published in CM on December 29 has drawn a sadderand-wiser response from an hgv driving examiner who, for obvious reasons, would rather not have his name published.
I've picked the following salutary tales from his comments:— "Recently the driver of a 6x4 thought it was a 6x2 and informed me that the differential lock switch was to lock the steering at night.
"Many candidates from a national vehicle group do not know there is a secondary brake fitted to the vehicle in which they have been trained, and are using on test. From the same group one driver said the secondary brake control handle was to empty the system of air; and many think the coupling warning light in the cab is a brake warning light.
"Other candidates don't •know which wheels the footbrake or handbrake act upon, none know why a transmission brake allows the vehicle to move slightly on gradients, or indeed what a transmission is."
Where have these people been trained — or haven't they?
• Vague cogs
More disturbing perhaps, is that this same examiner has found that not a single candidate he's asked has even a vague idea of the forces involved in starting a jack-knife, or knows the difference between a jackknife and trailer swing.
He tells us that many candidates fail to make any use of the two-speed axle throughout the test and are unable to explain its function or how it is operated.
Worse still, it is not unusual for the examiner to have to tell the candidate how many forward gears are fitted on the vehicle!
• Middle pedal, please
Which brings into sharp focus the latest ROSCO poster:—
• One-eyed menace
I'm delighted to see that the Metropolitan Police are campaigning for the improvement of vehicle lighting — and posters are springing up around London with the message: "Are you a one-eyed menace?" Meaning those people who drive cars or commercials with a defective offside headlamp, and so look like motorbikes until it is almost too late.
Sobering statistic: of 2,186,000 vehicles licensed in London, the police suggest that up to 322,000 may have defective lighting.
In the first nine months of 1972 in the London area alone there was an increase of 40 per cent in accidents involving vehicles parked at night.
So, please — let's have a light check on everything that moves.
• Inclined to save
When our Trevor Longcroft was involved in that load-shifting incident with a test vehicle, pictured in CM last year, he was saved by the cab tilting and letting the concrete blocks slide over.
Now a reader has sent me a picture cutting from an Aberdeen paper, which I reproduce here, showing a similar incident, with pipes — which the driver, though injured, survived because the cab tilted.
An obvious moral seems to be (apart from the need for better load security) that the locking mechanism on tilt cabs should be designed deliberately as the weakest link.