Damaging inaccuracies
Page 42
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• Congratulations on Paul Fisher's excellent and timely article "Horror Stories" (CM 13-19 June). Bus & Coach Council, like the organisations and companies Fisher quotes, is also absolutely fed up with lazy reporting and inaccurate shock-horror coverage of traffic accidents.
A current media preoccupation that affects BCC members is alleged speeding by (in particular) express coaches on motorways. From the way such stories are reported, you would think that every single coach is driven at a constant speed of least 70mph by dangerous and speed-mad drivers who, when not sitting on the tails of innocent motorists, are overtaking them at wildly excessive speeds.
And of course, whether the report comes from members of the press or members of the public, they
were always innocently doing no more than the permitted 70mph. They know this was so because they checked their speedometer as the coach thundered past them at "what must have been at least 80mph".
Over and over again we have repeated the speed limiter regulations to the press. Consequently at the very least these press members are now aware of the existence of speed limiters. However they still do not seem to believe in their efficiency, or in the honesty of operators and drivers in installing or using them.
The limiters must be fiddled in some way, or disconnected, or simply not installed. How else to explain away the clear evidence of being overtaken at 70mph (as shown on their car's speedometer)?
The suggestion that speedometers are not the high-precision instruments they supposed them to be is met with frank disbelief until we inform them that under Construction and Use Regulations a car speedometer is allowed to give an 80mph reading when the true speed is 70mph (ECE Reg 39), am not saying that this has stopped uninformed press reportage totally or
forever. But things have been a bit quieter. At least some journalists will look to other means to verify their "speeding coaches" stories.
Correcting misinformation given by sloppy reporting and making good the damage that results is a never-ending task. We all have a part to play in doing so — trade associations, their members and the reputable news and specialist press.
All credit and thanks therefore to Commercial Motor for taking this initiative. It is up to the rest of us — operators as much as anyone else — to follow CM's lead by making sure that errors of fact or judgment are never left uncorrected.
David Watson Director Public Affairs, Bus & Coach Council, London WC2.