Industry, greets DOT survey with derision
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by David Harris and Karen Miles • The Department of Transport's survey on the number of lorries running without 0-licences has been branded a farce. Industry incredulity has followed the DDT's announcement that only 1.6% of heavy goods vehicle mileage is done by illegal operators.
Traffic inspectors within the Vehicle Inspectorate, senior sources at the Traffic Area Offices, road safety campaigners and the Road Haulage Association have united in scepticism at the results.
"It has all the hallmarks of a total cockup. I just despair at the level of complete incompetence. God knows where they got the mileage figures from. The whole exercise was a farce," says one of several senior TAO sources attacking the survey. Others suggest a deliberate policy of keeping the figure low. One traffic inspectors' representative in the Vehicle Inspectorate says: "Certain things were deliberately excluded to keep the figure below 2%."
Two things are particularly provoking critics. First, the 1.6% is not the number of vehicles in the survey that were running without 0-licences, but an estimate of the total mileage done by vehicles without 0-licences (CM 15-21 February). This is puzzling VI traffic inspectors who do not know how the mileage has been calculated because mileage was not recorded in the survey. The DOT is refusing to clarify how the mileage figure was calculated.
Second, hauliers who had no 0licence "naively or ignorantly" were excluded from the hard core illegal figure (see tint box). Mary Williams, director of lorry safety campaign Brake, says: "What does the Department of Transport have to hide ? It is completely ridiculous that if someone says they are ignorant of the regulations they should be left out of the figures."
Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, a longstanding member of the Transport Select Committee, adds: "I'd no more trust Mr Norris's figures without careful examination than I would try to fly."
An RHA spokesman says: "We need to know the number of vehicles involved. The mileage is simply not good enough."
Despite widespread criticism of the survey, the DOT remains resolutely silent.
CI Ron Oliver, clue! executive of the Vehicle Inspectorate, defends the agency's objectivity: "The VI is an agent of the DOT in this. We were contracted to look at 5,000 vehides but we had only done 3,900 when the 1)07' asked us to stop." Oliver adds that delays in publishing further figures are being caused by the complexity of the data. The 3,900 vehicles are being put into several categories, he adds, which could number four or more. These include legal vehicles; illegal vehicles; operators without Oficences "through naivety or ignorance" who wanted to come into the 0-licence system as soon as it was pointed out to them; and vehicles where it was unclear whether they were exempt from 0-licence requirements.
Oliver agreed that mileage had not been part of the data gathered by the VI: "The mileage calculations have been deduced from the data we gathered—and where it was gathered—by the statisticians at the DOT."