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Tad° ideas will be 'a farce' says FTA
Page 22
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HE GOVERNMENT's new roposals for the introduction f the tachograph into some 00,000 British commercial ehicles threatens to produce farce. Hugh Featherstone, irector-general of the Freight 'ransport Association, told 'embers attending the FTA ast Riding Division dinner in iTillerby, that the two-year Ian for the tachograph failed ) take account of practical )alities.
It was crucial that there be ifficient tachograph stations ) seal and calibrate the inrument, yet at the moment, [most at the onset of the vo-year introduction ?quirements, only a third of ie necessary number of staons was in operation.
How were transport operairs in the North of England -id Scotland expected to cope ith only 16 stations open 3rth of York and only six orth of Glasgow? And there was no guarantee as to when, if ever, the remaining stations would be operational.
Fortunately the Government and the EEC commission had accepted the FTA recommendation that the fitting requirements for the unit were separate from operational obligations. The regulations provided for two years in which to fit tachographs and no requirement to operate them until the end of that two years. This had been a sensible decision to ease the pressure on operators and calibration centres alike.
However, the proposed regulations required that vehicles fitted with tachographs, but not operating them, nevertheless were obliged to make frequent visits to stations for re-calibration and sealing. This was a ludicrous way to deal with a shortage of calibration capacity.
FTA would be pressing the Minister of Transport for changes, but he had already indicated that there was little room for manoeuvre. As such it seemed that the transport industry was yet again the victim of politics, squeezed as it was by the inflexible EEC Commission which, having won its point of principle on the tachograph issue before the European Court of Justice, now insisted on impracticable conditions for the implementation of that decision.