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IF the early stages of the Road Transport Bill are anything of a guide, the prospects are remote of making it reasonably acceptable to the commercial vehicle operator and driver. The House of Lords, where the measure originated, considered that the Second Reading justified a debate lasting two days. There are experts in that House on many subjects, including medicine and legal procedure, and the knowledge and wisdom they displayed received the grave attention that is often conspicuously lacking in debates in the House of Commons. But with one or two exceptions there was little disposition to attack the Bill or to suggest radical alterations.
"We cannot have two sets of rules of safety, with different standards for goad drivers and indifferent drivers," said the Earl of Dundee, who wound up the discussion for the Government. This goes no further than saying that the law must be uniform and no respecter of persons. It overlooks the fact that there is more than one type of road user and that each type presents its own problems. There is certainly a case for having sections of the Bill devoted , to particular interests.
A clear example comes to mind as a result of the consternation expressed by commercial operators. Far more strongly than any other road users they have attacked the provision for automatic disqualification following three convictions within three years for any offences out of a list of 23. Some of the offences are grave by any standard; others seem less so. Operators are at one in singling out speeding as the item they would most like to see excluded from the list
SPRINKLED through the debate were tributes to the commercial driver. Lord Faringdon came near to drawing up a classification according to the type of vehicle. He placed lorry drivers at the top, with bus drivers not far behind, if not equal. Next in order came taxi drivers, followed at a considerable distance by the drivers of private cars. Even below these were the drivers of small vans. The purpose of these distinctions was not clear. Lord Faringdon went on to say that he supported the Bill, apparently without noticing that it penalized most strongly the drivers he had selected as being more skilful and considerate than the rest.
The commercial vehicle driver spends most of his working life on the road and covers many more miles than anybody else. Lord Derwent during the debate estimated that many motorists 'did not drive more than 2,000 miles in a year, whereas the total for the professional driver might easily reach 30,000 or 40,000. The likelihood of being caught out in an offence was several times greater in his case if mileage were the only consideration.
There are other considerations that make the odds even less favourable. The motorist need only watch his speed in built-up areas, or on stretches of road where a special limit is imposed. Except on a motorway the commercial driver is subject at all times to a limit of 30 m.p.h., and he is particularly tempted to go faster and thereby commit an offence on those roads where the more fortunate motorist can forget about his speedometer. The law seems designed to tempt the heavy vehicle driver into transgression and it is well-known that he does not resist the temptation. Lord Hawke, one of the few speakers in the debate who drew attention to this point, went on to say that coaches were a menace on the road unless they kept up a speed considerably in excess of 30 m.p.h. Complimented on all sides, and the object of considerable sympathy because in his case infractions of the law are almost inevitable, the commercial driver in any event stands to lose most under the new Bill. As the spokesmen for transport associations have already said several times, suspension of his licence, for many other road users no more than an inconvenience, for him spells the loss of his livelihood. While banned from driving he must find another job. By the time he has regained his licence he may have become settled in his new career and in any event may not find it easy, with a gap in his record, to.return to driving.
LORD CHESHAM. who opened the debate for the Government, set the tone by stressing the appalling and growing road accident figures, and much of the discussion was concerned with the possibility of reducing those figures by disqualifying bad drivers, whether they erred deliberately or were unfortunate enough to be accident prone. There seemed a fair measure of agreement that the harsher punishments in the Bill would have the desired effect. Little regard was paid to the danger that one result Would be to remove many of the drivers in the very categories that received the most praise.
The legislators must obviously think again on this point, whatever the force of their argument as a general principle. The motorist who fails to measure up to the standard of the Bill and loses his licence will usually have to dispose of his car and find some other means of transport. The commercial vehicle operator will carry on his business whether or not some of his drivers are disqualified. He will have to find replacements, possibly in a hurry, and it is more than likely that the new drivers will be less skilful than the old. In such circumstances the Bill will have the opposite effect to what is hoped.
Echoing a point previously made by Lady Wootton, the Earl of Dundee committed the Government to agreement with the opinion that disqualification should be considered "not as a punishment but only as the removal of a privilege for which a driver had shown himself unsuited." In her own speech Lady Wootton expressed her pleasure that it would now be possible, when a driver had exceeded the speed limit three times, to take away his " right " to do it a fourth time. It seems clear from the context that she had the motorist in mind. Whatever the merits of her theory, it seems a pity she made no attempt to assess its applicability in the commercial field.
IN general, there cannot be much disagreement with the contention that drivers with undesirable habits, or who fall below a certain level of competence, should be discouraged and in some cases forbidden to drive. The heaping up of punishments, which is the only method the legislators seem able to devise, is extremely clumsy and in some cases positively foolish, even if the punishment is bowdlerized into the "removal of a privilege." The opportunity must be taken in the later stages of the Bill to re-examine the categories into which offences are divided, so as to ensure in particular that the ultimate sanction of disqualification is used only where the offence is clearly one that offends against the canons of road safety.
There must above all be safeguards to prevent good drivers being lost to the road transport industry on purely technical grounds.