THOSE WEIGHT AND SPEED REGULATIONS!
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The Cry of the Bus Proprietor Whose Reward is Small and Who Suffers from Police-inflicted Pin-pricks.
By LOUIS L. STUART, Newington Motor and Engineering Co., Ltd, CAN we be enlightened as to when, if ever, the recommendationsmendations set out in the second Interim Report nearly a year ago are to become law? The constant delay is becoming•vexatious to all, and particularly the provincial bus proprietor. We who have pioneered services through what was considered " wildernesses "
__have no tenure of security so long as the position is left to the judgment of the rural magistrates and licensing authorities who invariably, as a body, take a narrow view of things in general and dominate and dictate to the industry as no other concern of any magnitude is treated. May I mention a few grievances which are typical all through the country?
One pioneers a service, say, for two years or more before it gets into the paying stage. Much capital has been sunk and lost. Many anxious hours have been passed away, timetables published and approved, altered and realtered to get the public needs satisfied. Advertising, printing, etc., have all gone into the melting pot, and the reward a one's labour comes on to the horizon-to sink with the setting sun, never to rise again. The cause is easily told. Some two or three competitors who have sat tight during the period of transition come forward and apply for licences to run on the pioneer's route, and (under the veil of competition being good for the public) licences are readily granted, fares are immediately reduced and the pioneer has a good many of his times altered to suit the new conditions of competition and given over to his rival without as much as "By your leave, please."
The Unwelcome Activities of the County Police.
So soon as our vehicles are out of the town boundaries the hateful 12 miles per hour speed limit is in vogue. Police disguised as civilians follow up in cars, motorcycles and sidecars, and overtake any vehicle they have a mind to. Yotr driver is. told he was doing umpteen miles per hour. A summons, conviction and fine follow as sure as nignt follows day. No matter whether you have a speedometer and 20 witnesses, the result is the same: No solicitor who logically argues your defence is Of any service to you. Pay, pay, pay is the order of the day, and what vindictive fines are.. meted out ! Five pounds and costs is a by-word to some of these unpaid gentlemen magistrates who adorn the bench and interpret the law as it appears to themselves. In the towns and cities, trams and omnibuses are permitted to run at any speed they choose, the police having always the protecting clause of "driving to the common danger" to fall back upon if any undue liberty is taken, by the drivers of vehicles—a common-sense view which one would have thought, by this time, had permeated the rural districts, but, alas ! no. I wonder if they have ever looked up the date of the 12-mile speed limit and its origin—one step up from the man with the red flag preceding the • road monster, long before the present mobile vehicle had its hirtIL-The new recommendations provide for 20 miles per hour, with an unladen weight of 3 -tons 15 ewt. on pneumatics, but when is it to become law?
Orders Withheld Because of Uncertainty.
Thousands of new vehicles are required to replace the old type now on the road, but who dare place orders for the new type with the cost of pneumatic equipment if the speed is still to be 12 miles per hour? Our factories could take off the dole hundreds of skilled and unskilled men to-morrow if these recommendations were to become an established fact. My cotinpanY has sat tight since last December waiting to place an order but dare not venture, and we but reflect the minds of hundreds of others.
General pin-pricks, such as standing passengers, annual inspections, running on specified routes and specified times, illuminations, safety gadgets and a hundred-anti-one other items insisted upon by various authorities, each having a code special unto its own district, render the whole system farcical and expensive to maintain, and are often at direct variance with the districts one passes through. Recently, we had two of our own conductors fined in an East Riding centre 11 and 12 respectively for overloading—in one case under 20 per cent. of the seating licensed and this on a Saturday night, last vehicles and a pleasure fair which was the centre of attraction being the cause—yet we have seen the same town police assisting to load and overload excessively to get the people away during a race meeting in the district. Although the Ministry's recommendations respecting this overloading distinctly provides for these exceptional circumstances, no notice was taken, but the fines were infliCted as stated. During the year, we insist and demand that this company's vehicles shall not run with an excess of passengers, but we have told our men that, on last runs, rather than leave people standing and having to walk miles to their homes, sonic little latitude must be given, and in this we might say we have the hearty support of several members of the watch committees, chief constables, and superintendents of police districts through whese territory We pass.
Effete Laws Which Have To Be Administered.
We have no complaint against the police authorities anywhere. Our experience is that by civility, the adoption of a friendly attitude, etc., they are always willing to help and assist to mate life bearable. Our complaint is that the law (which is as obsolete as any other instrument of torture of the savage days) still exists, and the police are compelled, when any vindictive or other ruffled individual lays a complaint, to take action. They are there to carry out the laws, not to make them nor amend them, and in many circumstances they are reluctantly compelled to act on the initiative of some dignified autocrat who lays the complaint. Yet even they we can forgive, but what is to be said of the presiding magistrates who inflict such heavy fines for such trivial offences and allow a person who works and ill-treats a suffering horse till it falls down by the wayside to escape with a penalty of 7s. 6d. and costs, and other examples too numerous to mention, which can he substantiated in every rural court in the country? Happy indeed is the bus proprietor whose routes compel him to be always in a borough or city area where a much wider and more humane view is taken of things that go to make up the day's work.
It is high time the whole bus 'world enrolled itself under one national banner and pressed forward its claim to Parliament to have these obsolete institutions buried , once and for all, and that they shall give immediate effect to the recommendations of a committee set up for that purpose and for which many hours of valuable time were freely given by the expert witnesses and the examining body and whose deliberations and suggestions form the Interim Report. long ago issued and now awaiting Parliament's action. Not until the same law and the same interpretation of that law become indisputable factors to every owner, user and controllable authority can we hope for an industrial peace in the bus world.