The Persecution of Drivers
Page 45
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Trenchant Opinions on a Vital Subject from Leading Operators
THE thanks of all transport managers and commercial
drivers are due to you for your courageous, outspoken, and greatly needed editorial drawing attention to the iniquitous unfairness under which industrial drivers carry on their duties.
The case you describe of a driver being deprived of his means for livelihood for a month for failure to produce his licence in Court savours more of senility or sadistic propensities than of that sense of proportion and responsibility which the public has a right to demand even from its amateur dispensers of justice. :Nobody expects a high aggregate of intellect from an unpaid Bench, but it is appalling that punishment should be ladled out by individuals who never consider that a fine of £2 or £8 means nothing to a rich man's son but often represents real hardship to the average commercial driver, entailing actual deprivation of the necessities of life for his wife and children. Yet, frequently, one can read in the papers cases where working drivers are fined as much for trivial technical offences as opulent persons are for being drunk in charge of vehicles.
You are quite correct when you say that any attempt at defence only increases the penalty. One Of my men, who had driven for eight years without injuring any living creature, or having any accident whatever, experienced a fine of .45 for overtaking a tram on the near side in a city that he had never entered before and where there was no notice of the local by-law forbidding a practice which is permitted in many other places, including the metropolis.
The whole question of motor cases being tried by persons having little knowledge of law, small knowledge of life or humanity, and less still of traffic problems, and who are unable to distinguish between competent and respectable drivers and the really undesirable users of the roads—despite the evidence put before them—is most unsatisfactory.
LOUIS DE SILVA, Transport Engineer, Raphael Tuck and Sons, Ltd.
I MUCH admire your leading article in The Conti mercial Motor, under the title. of "The Persecution of Drivers." This is something which is going on day
after day. As a fleet operator, apart from being honorary secretary of the Metropolitan Area of the R.H.A., I find my drivers on six-wheeled Leyland Cubs, with six-wheel brakes, capable of stopping in half their own length, but with a speed limit of 20 m.p.h., are being followed by the mobile police and stopped on a 10-minutes run on the main arterial roads between London and Birmingham. They are then accused of doing, on certain stretches of this run, 23 and 24 m.p.h., and fined anything from £1 to £3, if we defend the case. Licences are being endorsed, and after the second endorsement they are likely to be suspended for at least three months if the drivers are again caught exceeding the legal speed limit by so little as 2 to 3 m.p.h.
We have men who have been with the company six or seven years and we are faced with the fact that if their licences be suspended for three months they will have to go on to the dole.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact— and you can confirm this with S. Smith and Sons, Ltd., the speedometer manufacturer—that there is no speedometer marketed which shows readings less than 10 per cent. in excess of the actual road speeds.
I consider that, in the House of Commons, more stress ought to be laid on this persecution of drivers, and the Home Secretary ought to be asked questions about this gross injustice which is being done to men who have no intention whatever of breaking the law. As a motorist yourself, you know that unless you keep an eye constantly on the speedometer it is next to impossible to regulate modern vehicles, especially on a down grade, to 20 m.p.h.
I also enclose a summons against one of our members on a new prosecution adopted by the County Constabulary, particularly Warwickshire, under Section 21, called "Silent Controls," by which drivers can be summoned for speed, without being stopped, the police being allowed two months to take out a summons against the driver. This means that for over two months a driver may be asked to plead guilty to speeding on a stretch of road on which he probably cannot remember even having been, let alone the time to a second, which is alleged. ALLAN SIMPSON, Hon. Secretary, Road Haulage Association (Metropolitan Regional Area).
YOUR article in The Commercial Motor dated January 18, under the heading "Persecution of Drivers," certainly calls for some comment and wider publication.
You mention, among many other things, the unfair grading of fines. In our experience of police courts, on motor offences there appears to be very little justice. Space and time will not' permit us to relate some of our experiences over the past few years, but the writer was present at a West Riding Police Court on the first day of this year, and one received the impression that all present were fish for the net. During our presence there not one charge was dismissed. Some very intelligent drivers were present, and ,put their cases to the magistrates as clearly as was possible, but it was obvious that whether you are right, or wrong, you have got to pay.
One case in particular was a driver summoned for a smoky exhaust. He explained to the magistrates that it was impossible to avoid it; he had travelled down what is known as "Standedge " in third gear, and when at the bottom changed up, and, of course, a certain amount of smoke was bound to be seen then from the exhaust.. This was explained to the police constable; the driver also pointed out that if the officer would keep the lorry under observation for about 50 yards, the exhaust would clear itself. The owner of the vehicle is probably one of the largest operators in the country. The fleet is well maintained, but it made no difference.
He was fined, and rather heavily, we thought.
We imagine that this sort of thing goes on daily in the majority of British Police Courts. REGULAR READER.