A misleading view of road transport

18th September 1970, Page 132

18th September 1970

Page 132

Page 132, 18th September 1970 — A misleading view of road transport

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Many of your readers who saw the BBC 2 Wheelbase programme on Tuesday night must have found it difficult to believe they were not watching a television service put out by some unfriendly power with the deliberate intention of sabotaging the Commercial Motor Show before it even started.

It is a saddening and even a sinister reflection that people who ought to know better should be allowed to put out through the medium of a highly respected national corporation all the old falsehoods, halftruths and misleasing statistics and propaganda about dangerous lorries, dangerous lorry drivers and the rest.

It would be refreshing for a change if somebody at the BBC could bring himself to say the simple truth that Great Britain has a highly efficient road transport industry, that the vehicles supplied to that industry are well made and well maintained, that the drivers thoroughly deserve the high praise that at any rate the general public gives to them, that the accident rate for lorries is lower than that for any other category of road user and that the bad operator and driver—for inevitably these do exist—represent only a tiny fraction of the whole industry.

F. R. LYON, Public Relations Officer, Road Haulage Association, London WC1