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WE JUST WANT SAFE ROADS
Page 10
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You can accuse the Freight Transport Association and its chief executive Richard Turner of many things, but xenophobia is not one of them. Yet a number of Turner's counterparts on the Continent did just that.
"Dangerous vehicles are making a daily appearance on our roads"
So what did Turner do to have this accusation levelled at him... did he call for foreign trucks to be banned from the UK's roads? Did he say they should be subject to a swingeing levy for using this country's infrastructure? No. Turner's 'crime' was to call for all foreign vehicles entering this country to provide the licensing authorities with a bare minimum of data on the vehicle, its driver, its operator and its enforcement history As the FTA and RHA put it, "Tell us who you are."
Turner could have gone further by demanding that every truck entering this country is provably roadworthy. Or that its driver had not exceeded his hours. Or that its country of origin was fairly applying the Working Time Directive. But he didn't need to because these safeguards are already enshrined in law and our Continental competitors know full well that they should be obeying them.
However, it only takes a brief glance at recent Vosa statistics to realise that these laws are being widely ignored. Dangerous vehicles and equally dangerous drivers are making a daily appearance on our roads. Turner could have reminded the overseas trade associations about these facts and their obligations. He could have called for them to put their houses in order, but he didn't.
All he asked was that their members -their supposedly law-abiding members provide information that would allow Vosa to weed out the cowboys (a job their own enforcement authorities are meant to be doing anyway). If trying to enhance road safety by keeping dangerous lawbreakers off our roads is to be condemned as xenophobia or restraint of trade then so be it. But to us it sounds like no more than common sense.