Give a dog a bad name
Page 56
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NO OPPORTUNITY is lost for making angry noises about the heavy lorry and everyone concerned with it. Even the tachograph issue, which it might seem was the concern only of road transport interests, has been adopted by many of the organisations with a direct or indirect interest in the environment.
On a not very secure statistical basis, they argue that fitting tachographs will lead to a reduction in road accidents. By taking this line, the environmentalists are trying to insinuate themselves into the debate. At least they can reckon on the support of many people who have no strong feelings one way or another about the environment but are annoyed by heavy traffic.
Criticised . . .
Agreement on tachographs is urgently needed, but could be hindered rather than helped by the intervention of miscellaneous interests, even with the best of motives. So many proposals have been made for reducing road accidents, from insisting that a man with a red flag walks in front of every vehicle to the forcible transfer of traffic to a form of transport on which, it is comfortably assumed, accidents do not happen.
A driver who resents having a tachograph on his lorry may, of course, be a greater risk than before, Perhaps, therefore, there ought to be other instruments to measure his pulse, his heartbeats and his emotional state. A logical extension would be to have similar devices in every car.
It is well-known that many motorists, mild-mannered in a general way, become aggressive and dangerous as well as soon as they are behind a wheel.
They have at least the benefit of being assessed on a human level. The lorry driver is often criticised mainly in terms of his vehicle. Fitting a tachograph is expected to bring about a change for the better, although it must be known that the rogue driver or cowboy will remain the same whatever is done to his lorry, and will find ways of getting round any difficulties the tachograph may place in his way.
The same technique of transferring the personality from the man to the machine is adopted by other critics of the lorry.
A Parliamentary debate on the Highway Code could hardly fail to produce at least one such attack On the latest occasion it came from Sir John Langford-Holt, Conservative MP for Shrewsbury. There was nothing in the proposed new Code, he said, about the rows of heavy goods vehicles which thrashed up motorways at enormous speed, nose to tail like a lot of randy dogs.
Once Sir John had got this off his chest, he must have felt better. The vehicles about which he was complaining have no feelings, and would not mind the comparison, but no doubt the Canine Defence League has already sent a strong letter of protest to Sir John with half a million signatures.
Once praised . . .
Each of the vehicles in the horrendous procession he describes must have had a driver, but the impression is rather of riders on a string of horses galloping out of control. If he hoped that lorry drivers as a whole would mend their ways as a result of his strictures, he is likely to be disappointed. They are more likely to think of themselves as the Langford-Holt Irregulars rather than as the Knights of Sir John.
Once, the drivers of heavy lorries were praised and respected. and lived up to their reputation. A general criticism now is of a decline in their standards. The introduction of the HGV licence should have produced the opposite effect, and much of what purports to be objective observation may be prejudice.
If there is any truth in it, the explanation may be that 'the attacks, however motivated, have produced the state of affairs against which they are directed rather than the other way round. When a dog is given a bad name, he is inclined to live down to it,