Time for a tacho truce
Page 36
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THE FINAL stages of the General Election campaign distracted public attention from the crash between a lorry and a coach carrying schoolchildren on the M5 in Devon on June 6.
Normally the death of a teacher and the injuries — many serious — to 19 children and two adults would have attracted "shock-horror" headlines. In fact, all passed off relatively quietly as the public got back to watching the public opinion polls.
There was one exception to this almost universal Nelsonian attitude. On the day after the crash The Guardian published a factual article by its transport correspondent about the use of the tachograph in accident investigation.
Although on an inside page, the article was prominently displayed, and was illustrated by a large "blow-up" picture of a section of a tachograph chart from a vehicle which had been involved in an earlier accident.
It described the procedure in accidents similar to that on the M5, making it clear that tachograph charts from both vehicles would be subjected to detailed analysis and a complete speed and distance graph built up.
The article also quoted a case of two lorry drivers who had at first denied involvement in an accident in which a private car driver had been crushed to death, but were later forced to admit, after a detailed analysis of their tachograph charts, that their vehicles had been responsible.
It was probably inevitable that the example quoted involved a case which went against the lorry drivers. It would have been quite possible to choose from many others in which drivers' innocence was proved. Foster Tachographs, some of whose activities were described in John Durant's article in CM, May 21 had as one of its first cases in 1973 a roll-over accident in which two car passengers were killed.
Witnesses alleged that the lorry was being driven too fast. But — unusually for 1973 — the lorry was using a tachograph. Under analysis, this showed that the lorry was travelling at only 16mph. As a result the driver was not even prosecuted.
Guardian readers are probably not among the world's greatest lorry lovers. The article must therefore have opened a few eyes as they learned how closely a lorry or coach driver's activities are monitored, and the beneficial results which can be obtained by detailed expert analysis.
The surprising thing about all this is that, to those in the industry, there is nothing at all surprising about it. In the last eighteen months tachograph use has not only become compulsory; it has also become a habit. And — again, as John Durant's article showed — many operators find them a positive blessing. The public, though, is almost totally unaware of all this, and pictures lorries as untamed beasts tearing unchecked all over the country.
Yet there are still those in Britain — including, unfortunately, some parts of the road transport press — who seem to delight in keeping alive the controversy about the use of the tachograph which raged between 1967 and 1982.
Rarely, if ever, do the industry's spokesmen say anything nice about the instrument to the public.
One does not have to be a tachograph salesman to think that this is a pity. This journal is master-minding a campaign to improve the industry's image among the general public. This will be an uphill struggle. It will not be helped if spokesmen give the impression that instruments which simply record important facts about what a vehicle and its driver have been doing are an unwelcome limitation on an operator's freedom to do as he pleases.
The most recent example of this concerns the case brought against a bakery firm which, on the direction of the High Court, was convicted of failing to fit a tachograph in a vehicle used for delivering bread. The operator had argued that it was a specialised vehicle used for door-to-door selling, and therefore exempt. The case is now being taken to the House. of Lords, which next week will hear the firm seeking leave to appeal.
It is not impossible to have sympathy with the firm. The EEC Regulation from which the exemption stems does not define either of the crucial terms "specialised" or "door-to-door selling". The Department of Transport, no less, had apparently given the operator the green light. So the decision to seek a definitive ruling from the Lords is both understandable and welcome.
But less sympathy is attracted by the remarks of the Bakers' Federation Director Michael Rogers, who was reported as saying (CM, April 9) that if the decision is not reversed "the costs of complying with it will have to be met by increasing the price of our products."
Trade association officials often have to say the sort of things their members want to hear. But surely it would have been more helpful if Mr Rogers had said that if the decision is not reversed the bakery industry will do what almost all other sections of road transport have had to do. This is to see, in discussion with their drivers, how they can get the maximum benefit out of use of the tachograph. In the case in question, the driver apparently made deliveries at four shops and an old people's home. Many operators have found in the last couple of years that use of tachographs on that sort of daily round has enabled savings to be made. The bakery industry is unlikely to be different.
Whatever the outcome of this case, it is surely time for a fresh look at the list of categories exempted from the tachograph. When the instrument was belatedly introduced the Government of the day took advantage of all the exemptions which are available. That was probably prudent at the time, if only to reduce the pressure of the retrospective fitment programme on the calibration stations.
But today things are quite different. The RHA has already drawn attention to the inequity of the exemption enjoyed by the Post Office, their members' major competitor in the parcels field. There are many other categories whose exclusion would be worth examining.
But the main need is for the industry's leaders to forget that there was ever a battle over the tachograph, and to cease sniping at it. They gain nothing, and lose a great deal of public sympathy.