Road safety: is it time to belt up?
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IT DOES you no credit to print a letter (CM November 14) from one of your own publisher's staff (Mr John Blauth of 1PC Transport Press) stating that an earlier correspondent (Mr InghamJohnson, September 26) on the subject of seat-belts is on "the level of lower animals".
Arrogance and disregard of the need for, at least, courtesy to customers is increasing and it is sad to see Commercial Motor going the same way.
Not being a commune-ist, Mr Ingham-Johnson is probably more concerned with his family and nation than with Mr Blauth"s upstart commune-ity. If the latter's vague but sinister organisation is so foolish as to be prepared, in the event of Mr Ingham-Johnson's death in a road accident, to spend the ridiculous sum of £100,000 on his affairs and remains, please do not insult Mr InghamJohnson or other readers. You would find that most of us, even the non-animals, are still taken up with individual freedom and the avoidance of dictatorial foreign groupings and ideas based on the commune.
There is no evidence that the freedom-limiting, worldstandardising, crackpot schemes for which road transport has paid so dearly in the past few decades have resulted in any reduction in road accidents. If Mr Blauth and his community are so sure about seat-belts, let them guarantee the repeal of the legislation and the refund of expenditure if, after six months, they do not have the claimed result. You do not need me to tell you how unlikely this is to t done.
DON WILLIAMS Oxted, Surrey
The essence of what Mr Blautt said is that any assumption th, "one man's death is merely an efficient form of population control reduces him to the leve of lower animals", and this wa not a sentiment, in my view, that should be excised. IPC Transport Press is quite large and Mr Blauth is not on the sta of CM's publishing director, bu is a reader involved in the transport industry and is entitled to his own point of vie' on the too-important-to-sneerat subject of road safety. No man is an island. — Editor.