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viewby the Hawk
• Tank driver
When Norman Singer, this year's LDoY champion, visited Sweden last week on the Michelin "prize" study tour he had an opportunity of driving a 650-gallon BP tanker, 1927 vintage, from the Scania Museum. Quite undaunted Norman got behind the wheel and roared off at a steady 15 mph, confident that he could negotiate all of the hazards of driving on foreign soil. Much less confident was Hasse Brander, the Saab-Scania PRO who failing to catch up with Norman on foot gave hot pursuit in his own car!
As the tour progressed the compact and energetic Swede proudly introduced Norman wherever he went as "The Champion" — and Norman certainly demonstrated just what a true champion he is. At the height of Stockholm's rushhour traffic he drove a Scania LB140 with a drawbar trailer which was over 24 metres long and weighed 50 tons. Just to prove that his impressively skilful drive was no fluke he then jumped into a tanker outfit grossing 38 tons and loaded with fuel and off he went again into the busy Stockholm evening traffic.
The study tour, which was awarded by Michelin for the first time this year, included visits to Michelin's headquarters in Sweden, the Swedish Road Haulage Association, Shell International, the Saab-Scania factory and a conducted tour of Stockholm road construction. Each visit was accompanied by a lecture.
His evenings were spent looking at another side of Swedish life but that is another story and next week CM will be publishing a fuller report of the tour and revealing more about the new champion himself.
• 3000 experts
Traffic managers have realized for a long time that drivers' views on the suitability of their vehicles are important. Norman Kevan, of BRS Parcels Ltd, inspired a drivers' opinion survey in Platform, the house newspaper of the Green Van Men, which brought out the unanimous praise of drivers for the rigid, box vehicles now in general use for C
and D work. No one called for artics or demountables.
Driver K. F. Jones, of Wellingborough branch, wanted more cab comfort. As a sixfooter, he much preferred his former Bedford 7-tonner to his current BMC 5-tonner. K. F. Jones' warning that rain too readily sprays up from the wheel nuts onto the near side window, obstructing visibility, is to be taken up by BRS Parcels management. And he had some sensible things to say about the position of mirrors and door pillars for safe operation in traffic.
Driver F. S. Martin, of City Branch, liked the short tailboard on his 5-tonner, only half the weight of a normal tailboard. "Much easier to handle and what it boon when it is realized how often a driver has to use it." D. Lawrence, of James Express Carriers, won an award recently for a simple device attached to the tailboard which shows in the driver's mirror when the tailboard is up.
Norman Kevan's appeal to his "3000 expert users" to feed back comments, whether of praise or criticism, is one that could be echoed by all operators.
• Good Excuse!
Road haulage insurers, who are pretty blase about the excuses drivers give for vehicle accidents, will be horrified to hear of a recently published Indian survey of daily road accidents over a four-year period in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.
It seems that the boffins have concluded that geomagnetic disturbances influence driver behaviour, and hence may cause accidents. On 83 per cent of magnetically calm days there were no road accidents but on 81 per cent of severely disturbed days there were many accidents.
The relation of accidents to increases in the earth's magnetic field caused by enhanced solar wind activity suggests — says the Bombay State Transport News — "that the nervous and mental conditions of human beings are greatly influenced by severe geomagnetic disturbances".
Most of us can think of other things — and people — that give us nervous indiges tion. But as a novel contributory cause for road accidents "geomagnetic disturbance" is worth a try-on.