HGV: It's not fair
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WITH reference to your editorial 'Act on report' (CMJ uly 7), 1 would like to put forward my point of view.
First of all the hgv test should be scrapped. Why £65 plus £478 for lessons which can last five to 10 days for a two-hour test? It's just a waste of time and money. I have tried twice and have almost two years of hgv driving experience on a provisional licence behind me yet I still cannot pass a test which is irrelevant to conditions you find on the road.
The testers are incompetent, all they see is another failure which adds up to £65 plus, and what's to say you will pass again? I have complained but get nowhere.
If I joined the army I would get an hgv, no problem. lam led to believe that at 17 you can drive hgvs for the armed forces, so why is it that at 32 I cannot get an hgv pass, yet I have experience of 15 years of driving behind me?
I want to see the pre-1930 way of getting an hgv licence brought back with this example: you must be over 32, proven on L-plates and have no less than 10 years previous driving experience before you are able to request a hgv licence be issued to you.
You must also have a job in hgvs or prove the licence is needed for either your own business or a partnership business. I would also like to say that if a person is going to pay around £500 for hgv lessons, plus test, then it should be the person who is taking the pupil out on the road who passes or fails the paper, not somebody else.
Also, why is it that the North has a higher rate of failure than anywhere else in the country?
I have written this letter because I have been trying to set up my own haulage business, but due to the incompetence of the hgv testers/examiners, I am still at square one.
DAVID IAN ARMISHAW Sale Cheshire