MPs hear of time limit safety fear
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by Miles Brignall • Dangerous lorries are being let off lightly because Vehicle Inspectorate "efficiency" measures put a target time on vehicle examiners' roadside checks, a committee of MPs has been told.
Vehicle examiners are allotted just 23 minutes to look over trucks at the roadside—which encourages them not to find too many defects, the Transport Select Committee was warned.
Kevin Rooney of the Institution of Professional Managers & Specialists (IPMS), which represents vehicle examiners, said that target times mean examiners find one or two defects and move on to write the prohibition notice, for which they are allocated an extra six minutes, rather than going over the vehicle thoroughly to find any other defects. He said that the system needs to be changed to develop serious fault-led targeting of "quality rather than quantity".
The time of 23 minutes for a truck compares with the 10-15 minutes per axle the VI allows for an annual test. On this time scale a six axled artic would receive an inspection of up to an hour and a half.
However, the VI says that the target figures cannot be compared with the annual test because it includes tests such as a rolling road brake check and others that cannot be carried out at the roadside. It points out that an times are checked to make sure that they are practicable and they are only targets.
"Examiners can take longer to look at vehicles and have to log the actual time it takes to go over the vehicle," says the VI. -I For a full report on Transport Select Committee, see page 6.
Freight Transport Association regional engineer Alan Pallett says his vehicle examiners are allowed up to two hours to examine a 38tanner. ill would not be confident that we could pick up all the defects on a vehicle in 23 minutes and as such find it difficult to see how the VI can," he says.