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Page 41
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SIR
white lines; no hills, no blind bends, cyclists or pedestrians. There will be cones down the middle and, usually good lighting at night.
Legislation and draconian penalties don't improve road safety. It is the failure of individuals to accept their responsibilities and to drive defensively that are the factors which reduce accident risk.
Blaming other drivers, the roads, Parliament or the judiciary is merely an excuse. Anthony G Phillips
SallShiny Wilts
TRUCKERS, YES TRUCKS, NO
• .1 read with dismay your comment column in Commercial Motor of 16 September under the heading of "2nd Class Citizens". I have every sympathy with your readers and am frustrated by not being able to do much about it. The truth of the matter is that our landlords' planning approval at the South Mimms Service Area on the M25 excludes provision for truck drivers because a rival company, Deards, who is immediately adjacent to South Mimms, has the planning consent for providing truck drivers' facilities.
We are delighted, yes delighted, to welcome truck drivers to South Mirnrns, the only problem is we are prevented from allowing them to park their trucks, or to fuel for that matter. So we have to pay (yes pay) for a security guard to tell potential customers to park somewhere else and walk back if they are prepared to!
We operate motorway service area facilities all over the country with large parking areas reserved for trucks, and are only too pleased to welcome truckers.
I do not know why our services are given a reputation for discouraging lorry drivers. We have been serving them for thirty years and were the first company to open a service area with separate lorry parks and fuelling. We are not 'anti', just on the receiving end of an arrangement that is no good to us or to truckers who deserve to be better served. So can we please lay this one to rest once and for all?
Tony Monnickendam Managing director
Trusthouse Forte Service Areas WHOSE TRIALS?
• would like to thank you for the excellent coverage afforded BTAC on the event at MIRA, the technical content will I am sure be of interest to many operators in the industry outside brewing.
Your heading 'BTAC Trials' made me feel a degree of guilt, however. This event has now expanded and requires such a high degree of sophistication that for BTAC to stage it alone would be almost impossible. Now it is a team effort with the co-operation of organisations and manufacturers, who apart from their commercial interests see the value of this trial to the industry as a whole.
The aims of the IRTE for Technical Excellence are akin to those of BTAC who puts them into working practice via the IRTE Type 1 Procedures (obtainable from IRTE). They also bear some of the cost of the event as BTAC is a non profit self funded body (Annual Seminar, Coventry 12 April 1988). Other team members were, Post Office Parcels, marshals and transport, British Telecom, communications, Fletcher Computer Services, results, Leyland DAF, all important food, Traffic Safety Systems, Radar Gun, Lucas Kinezle Instruments (Tacho analysis) Perkins, hospitality suite and Mobil who, apart from supplying fuel, provided an electronic scoreboard and gave commemorative ties to all marshals, NIS, tyres, and of course MIRA staff.
The last but not least members of the team are the press because without their goodwill and objective reporting all my efforts would be pretty negative.
Bill Montague
Secretary BTAC The editor welcomes readers' letters.
Write to: Dear Sir, Commercial Motor, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS.