FTA jibs at 'cheese-paring' decals
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• The PTA has told the Mo'f that it is strongly opposed to the Ministry's proposal that trailers and semi-trailers should be identified by a paper or plastics-coated decal.
A decal, of the quality envisaged, would be totally unsuitable as a means of permanent identification of a trailer, says the association, it being virtually impossible to ensure that the decal remained fixed to the trailer during its currency. To protect themselves from possible prosecution for the non-display of the decal, operators would be obliged to incur additional expense to provide, for example, special holders to carry the unsatisfactory disc which the Ministry proposed to provide.
An PTA statement says that. although the association had had to accept, for the time being, the totally inadequate Ministry plate, it could "see no reason whatsoever why it should be expected to accept the perpetuation of this sort of deficiency when it was so easy for the Ministry to provide an adequate and suitable marking in the first place. Some simplt.,1 and quick form of engraving ought to be feasible, but failing this it would only take a matter of seconds for test station staff to mark the trailer with some form of stencil."
Adoption of a cheese-paring attitude in such matters, says the PTA, not only gives rise to operational problems and extra costs, but can easily generate the view that the whole testing and plating scheme is really of very little significance and that "‘anything will do".