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• We won... didn't we? The hundreds of hauliers and drivers who supported CM's Say No to 50 campaign with letters and petitions can congratulate themselves on defeating the European Commission's proposal for truck speed limiters set at 50mph. On the day that European Transport Ministers met in Brussels CM received a letter from Roads and Traffic Minister Christopher Chope backing the campaign: "I agree wholeheartedly with your concern over the reduction in maximum operating speeds," he said.
Too bad he didn't "wholeheartedly" tell the EC that the compromise solution of 90km/h (56mph) — believed to have been put forward by the Dutch — was not acceptable either. But we probably got the best deal going: the British road transport industry could all too easily have ended up being sacrificed on the altar of "good europeanism".
So is the battle over? Not by a long chalk. The next job is to cut through the fog of confusion over the differences between what the EC says about retrofit, and what the DTp has already planned. Then there's the matter of interpreting tolerances and sorting out annual calibration checks.
We must also make sure that everybody knows the true cost of a 90km/h limit for trucks and 100km/h for coaches, and now's the time to scuttle the myth about limiters increasing road safety. We've all heard the spurious safety arguments: it's time the wool was lifted from the Great British Public's eyes. They wanted them; they got them. Now they'll have to pay for them.