DANCE OF THE HOURS
Page 85
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
AFTER so cautious and thorough a consideration of the problem of drivers' hours one might have expected some novel and even revolutionary proposals from the Ministry of Transport. What has, in fact, emerged is little more than a scaling down of the existing structure. Perhaps this is inevitable and right but there are few signs of any profound thought on the subject as a whole or on the relationship of drivers' hours to other matters such as wages and productivity.
According to the official statement the Minister's view is that "the present permitted hours of driving are too long in modern traffic conditions." This suggests without saying so specifically that the permitted hours were satisfactory a generation ago. Other references to the protection of the public make it clear that the interests of road safety are the main reason for limiting the hours by law and for imposing what the Minister calls "revised penalties"—that is to say stiffer penalties—for infringement.
If the meaning is that it is dangerous to drive a commercial vehicle for more than nine hours in a day most people would agree. There may have been little specific research into the proportion of accidents in which the drivers involved have been too long at the wheel but common sense and the experience of millions of motorists point to the conclusion that the tired driver is a dangerous driver. The period beyond which fatigue becomes a risk varies with the individual and the circumstances, but nine hours seems long enough.
Driving time
Justification is less self-evident for other items in the Ministry plan. Once the actual driving time is limited the hours when the driver is perhaps waiting at a depot and is technically, therefore, still at work do not seem so important from the road safety angle. If nine hours is right for one day it should also be right for the next. Why, therefore, apparently on the grounds of road safety, limit the number of hours in the working week and make it compulsory to stay away from work for one day in each week?
There may be other good reasons for these measures. The tendency throughout industry is towards a five-day week and a working day of eight or nine hours. In this context a spell of duty limited to 11 hours and a working week limited to 60 hours are not out of place. What seems strange is that they should be treated as if in the same category as the maximum of nine hours actual driving in a day.
The Ministry admits that there is an enforcement problem. "It is too easy for an operator or driver determined to disregard the rules to avoid conviction," says the statement. It is proposed to fit tachographs and to make the driver's record personal to him so that it will be less easy than at present to hold two separate driving jobs. If he is determined to be a moonlighter at all costs there is, of course, nothing to prevent him from choosing a secondary occupation which does not involve driving a commercial vehicle. In the same way he would be at liberty to take a long trip in his own car on his day of thus frustrating the purpose of the law although keeping to its letter.
The strategy
Under the new proposals it may be less easy to break the law with impunity but it will still be possible. Although enforcement staff will be helped by the greater powers to be given to them it is likely that they will remain relatively few in number and that the offender will be no less tempted than he is now to take a chance and to consider himself unlucky if he is caught. When Ministry officials are so thin on the ground the strategy should be to concentrate their efforts at the point where there is most danger to the public.
Undoubtedly, the main problem is the amount of time spent driving in the course of a single day. If the figure of nine hours is eventually approved the recording instruments, the logbooks and any other devices thought necessary should be designed primarily to reveal what driving has been done by a man since he started work. The most stringent penalties should be reserved for exceeding the daily maximum.
Here, then, is the essential issue. If it is obscured operators and the Licensing Authorities will have yet another complicated piece of legislation with which to grapple. The Minister may find herself in difficulties even before the legislation is passed. There will certainly be protests from both the passenger and the goods side. As the servants of the public and of industry, road transport operators have to fit in with the demands of customers with a wide variety of transport problems.
Limits prescribed for actual driving time can be appreciated, particularly as the Minister intends to keep the proviso that the rules will not apply when a driver is delayed on a journey by circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen. The customer or passenger will not so easily understand why the permitted working time of a driver should be so close to the permitted driving time. It is a difference of only two hours and even that includes the statutory half-hour break after 5+ hours.
There will be many demands for exceptions, particularly from certain categories of goods vehicle operator. Those with seven-day schedules forced upon them by the nature of the traffic will question the sense of employing, perhaps, inexperienced drivers—and therefore potentially dangerous drivers—for one day in the week only. Those who complain of long delays at terminals will be further embarrassed by the shrinking of the working day.
Too optimistic
The Minister appears to take problems of this kind too lightly. She is correct in her belief that there is scope for increases in productivity through, for example, the negotiation of realistic running schedules by hauliers and the faster introduction of one-man operation in the bus industry. It may be over-optimistic of her to expect, as she does, that before reductions in permitted hours take place "employers and trade unions will together take positive steps to bring about substantial improvements in efficiency of operation".
Her motive is clear. She realizes a reduction in maximum hours means increases in operating costs and a reduction in drivers' pay. She would prefer drivers to earn no less and operators to charge no more. If past experience is a guide the time-scale needed to bring her wishes to fruition would be considerably longer than the few months after which she hopes to introduce her legislation. She might find progress easier if she trimmed her proposals down to the essentials.
Janus