Drivers' hours study has implications for eight-hour limit
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by CM reporter VITAL implications for the EEC's controversial eight-hour driving day limit may result from a study of driver fatigue just started by the Medical Research Council. A two-year, C60,000 programme begun by the Council—and initiated by the Government's Transport and Road Research Laboratory —is to consider "the whole cab environment, vehicle noise and vibration and driverfatigue."
Although the study was intended to be an accident prevention exercise, it clearly has considerable potential as a weapon in the fierce battle now developing over the EEC Regulation 543/69 (for ETA's reaction see page 3). First results of the study should be available by October—ahead of the January l introduction date for the eight-hour day in the U.K.
Professor J. S. Weiner, head of the Centre's Environmental Physiology Unit, told CM this week that the project was still at a " very early stage," but admitted that several months laboratory work had been completed. The next stage was the equipping of a Bedford tractive unit—supplied by TRRL—with driver-measuring instruments. A member of the unit's staff has been undergoing hgv driver training.
Government's doubts
A special correspondent writes: News that the Govern ment, albeit in a roundabout way, is studying the effects of the proposed eight-hour day adds considerably to a widelyheld understanding that it too has serious doubts about the wisdom of Regulation 543/69. Several other European countries are known to be up in arms against the measure which itself is based on some outdated and suspect American research. If fresh research in Europe—and the Medical Research Council had a meeting about the subject with EEC officials in February—shows that a reduction in the driving day would not necessarily reduce accidents then enough voices could be raised against the proposals for the Corn mission to have to think again.
The EEC Commission has already, as reported CM on May 9, commissioned its own research into driving hours and fatigue—through the German research institute Batteleand accepts that this, and perhaps some additional research later this year, may cause Regulation 543/69 to be modified "one way or the other."
Only last Tuesday, Minister for Transport Fred Mulley tole road hauliers at their annual dinner that his Department had played a strong part ir getting the Commission to re. view " some of the silliel aspects of the rules governirq permitted hours of drivingeg the 450km limit."