3ird's eye
Page 25
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hewby the Hawk Weight of tidence
e AA's recent attack on overloaded lorries tde prominent use of figures published by (then) Road Research Laboratory, a ;tor which sent me in search of RRL port 380, the origin of the figures. It is ite a short report and makes interesting tcling. Especially interesting is the fact it the figures prove to be relatively old ones. In the first place, the RRL study was clertaken in December 1968 to see what es of vehicles were most prone to overKling, because experience at some nstated) period before this had shown that one main-road site in one week, 442 les out of 129,000 (including cars) were er 12.5 tons. These very heavily over'tied axles were only 0.34 per cent of ?, total — though we are not told how many the total were on commercial vehicles. it at least it begins to put a very different rspective on the AA's use of the figures. As a judgement of the prevalence of overWing the figures are meaningless, though can be no source of pride to the road insport industry that in a week at a single am n road site over 300 axles were loaded :yond 12.5 tons, 66 over 14.3 tons and over 16 tons!
I No juggers Liblic reaction to the emotive word "overaded" is to picture the biggest and heaviest rry — in which they would be quite wrong. s I said, the RRL was keen to find out what per of vehicles were being overloaded. As iy haulier could have told them, the great reponderance was four-wheelers, whose ;ar axle is so easy to over-load — in fact it something of a minor scandal that manucturers have continued to sell 16-ton-gvw ucks which cannot be loaded to this legal nit in any manner known to man without atomatically overloading the rear axle. Of about 6000 vehicles registered by the RL weighbridges as having over 12.5 tons n an axle, half were four-wheelers with a vin-tyre rear axle, a third were three-axle rtics and about an eighth were artics with a )ur-in-line rear axle layout.
Significantly, there was hardly a case of tandem-axled rigid or attic being over)aded — and not a single case of an overload n a vehicle used for abnormal, notifiable rads.
I Little brother
he RRL experiment has, I think, a quite fferent lesson — that with a relatively small shift in the rules of evidence it would be possible for the authorities to use electronic "spies" that could virtually wipe out overloading.
For its tests, the RRL was interested solely in the loads being imposed on its experimental road surfaces at 11 main road sites on Al (Alconbury), A30 (Nately Scures), A38 (Whitfield), A40 (Wheatley by-pass) and A4091 (Tamworth) but it was able to set up unobtrusive mechanisms which not only logged every vehicle with an overweight axle but recorded the vehicle's speed and photographed it — including the number plate. The latter was done simply to establish the age of the vehicle, and not for enforcement purposes — but it takes little imagination to see the legal possibilities.
To my mind, one thing which the RRL figures achieve is to make something of a nonsense of DoE claims that an 11-ton axle limit would demand vast road and bridge strengthening programmes; it seems that for years our roads have been taking a fair old whack of 12, 14 and even over 16-ton axles. Which the DoE must know because the RRL report was made under their auspices.
• Such devotion It really was lorry knocking week last week. Following the AA attack, the national Press became involved again. Relaxing from our labours on Sunday we turned to the Sunday Times to find that they were once again on the witch hunt. Under the title "The Dirty Dozen" they have committed themselves to carry out spot checks throughout the country this summer to discover the extent of pollution caused by lorries. Presumably reporter David Blundy and photographer Michael Ward will go about their tasks armed not only with a camera and a notebook but also with a smoke meter. Operators will have the doubtful privilege of telling the Sunday Times "experts" why their vehicles were emitting what the ST men consider to be excessive black smoke.
One of the Sunday Telegraph financial correspondents, Frank Gould, became a transport expert last week. He took up the AA theme of juggernauts knocking down ancient monuments, and the cost of strengthening bridges. To the uninformed no doubt his emotive piece was impressive.
The real case for the haulage industry was made by CM's editor who at the uncivilized hour of 7.15 on Monday morning faced BBC's Today interviewer Tom Bostock and in very simple language in the short space of three minutes placed the facts before the nation, or at least those who were up early enough to hear them.
There is a great danger that the economy of the nation which depends greatly on an efficient road transport industry will be adversely affected if the environmental lobby supported by the mass media has its way. Before it is too late the RHA and the FTA should be making loud noises in the right places.
• The diplomats
If Ted Heath ever considered looking beyond the Government for a solution to the Irish or TGWU problems he might do worse than approach Van Allen, president of Ryder Truck Rentals. Who but a supreme diplomat could bring together the top brass of BLMC, Chrysler, Cummins, Ford, Volvo, ERF, Foden, Goodyear, Michelin and Firestone for a most affable meeting? It happened in London this week and an illustration of Ryder's diplomacy was the m.d.'s address. Bob Anderson never once referred to the company's English operations but was careful always to say British, an acknowledgement, perhaps, of the presence of Ailsa Trucks' Jim McKelvie from North of the Border.