bird's eye
Page 24
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view by the Hawk
• BRSL spacemen?
Now that the Americans have successfully finished their moonshot programme, are British Road Services about to leap in — perhaps with a Moonfreight version of the Overnight Express? The last eight pages of the excellent Transport Director's Yearbook produced by the BRS Group for 1973 are devoted to the moon — with what, at first sight, I took to be parcels rates charts for such way-out destinations as the Mare Imbrium and Lacus Soniorum.
Closer study, however, reveals that these are index numbers to the superb plates illustrating the features of the moon, and I must say it doesn't look much like road transport territory.
Still, it's one place that shouldn't present many permit problems.
• Battery call
It's always good to start a New Year with a tidy garage and I'm happy today to be able to give you the opportunity to get rid of your old vehicle batteries. Geoff Bradley, of Garrick House, Drysdale Street, London N1, has set himself the enormous task of collecting 70,000 batteries in order to buy an electron microscope for the Institute of Ophthalmology, where his son Ricky recently had his sight restored after being blind since the age of two.
Now, if you think about it, the scrap value of a battery is around 5p a volt so just think how much good you could do by turning yours in for Geoff's good cause at very little cost to yourself.
If you've got more than 10 batteries hell come and collect them — but of course it would cut his costs if a contractor in each area could organize bulk deliveries.
We know you are all real good guys — here's an opportunity to prove it to the rest of the world.
• Calculating
I know that millimetres are smaller than inches, but maths have never been my strong point. Qn the eve of our entry into Europe, however, I have been given a weapon with which I can challenge CM's boffins on their own terms. I'll bet that, for example, I can convert 11ft into metres (answer: 3.352) quicker than they can'.
The weapon is National Carriers' new conversion slide-rule which is so simple that I am now doing cubic inches into cc and gallons into litres with an effortless flourish.
• Soothing
Talking of devices, Fred Hope speaks very highly of an American invention which he is finding relaxing on long journeys. It is a slim cushion that fits between the seat squab and the driver's back and provides an adjustable amount of vibration when switched on. He says that as well as massaging tired or sore shoulders it sends a warm tingle down your back.
If truck or bus drivers are interested in finding out more about it, Fred invites them to drop him a line through the Hope Anti-jack-knife Drivers' Club, High Street, Ascot, Berks.
• Suspicious
Someone who watches the Fenn Street Gang on ITV tells me he suspects the ingenious hand of Phil Ives must have been involved in the most recent programme, involving a hijacking. The vehicles were a Ford with Coachwork Conversions body and a Volvo; Phil worked for years with Ford, became managing director of Coachwork Conversions and is now general manager and director of the Allen Trucks group.
Come on, Phil, own up!
• Getting it across
Very appropriately for January 1973 the front cover of the monthly journal of ICHCA carries six "thoughts on communication", including several not unlike some of my recent "thoughts for the week". (To get the communications bit right, I had better say that ICHCA is the International Cargo Handling Co-ordination Association.)
Culled from the front page I offer you the following:— Unless there is someone who hears, there is no communication, only noise.
Peter Drucker
The highest ideas, the most progressive policies, even the greatest goodwill are doomed .to failure unless they are expressed
• Chilling
To make road safety messages stick, they have to be brutal enough to bring you up short, I think.
For instance, in the lively little road safety bulletin which Derby Constabulary issues, there's a report of a talk given by H. Taylor of the TRRL, in the course of which he referred to scepticism about wearing seat belts for local journeys.
His message was to the point: "Half the injuries to car users occur in built-up areas, most of them near home and at modest speeds. When two cars collide head-on at 30mph they are stopped in about 2ft. The occupants, if unrestrained by seat belts, will carry on unchecked, striking the interior of the car with a violence roughly equivalent to falling face-down to the ground from the roof of a house."
Ugh! See what I mean?
Even more chilling is a RoSPA report which records that 13 per cent of mothers of two-year-old children and 44 per cent of mothers of five-year-olds think that their youngsters can cross busy roads on their own.
That explains some of the irresponsible examples I've seen while driving; but just how do you go about changing such appalling attitudes?