Reassuring signs from the unions on tacho issue
Page 58
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
IT IS REASSURING that Mr Alan Law of the TGWU and others of his fraternity so much prefer the mind over the machine that they are refusing to allow vehicles on the road if they are fitted with tachographs.
Once this instrument of' idleness and illiteracy becomes univei'sal, as the EEC is demanding, the lorry driver will no longer have to carry his ink, inderble pencil or ballpoint pen around with him and make his entries on the record form -as soon as possible after the events Which they record," as the instructions put it.
Accurate account
Being ve'y much like anybody else, the average driver might have welcomed a device which made the keeping of records unnecessary. It is true that the tachograph, when it is working properly, gives a more accurate account of the driver's activities than he may like, whereas a written record is compiled in the knowledge that it has to satisfy the employer and possibly the examiner. On the other hand, vehicles have been running with tachographs or other time recorders for many years, apparently without causing enforcement problems, and they are said to be preferred by Continental drivers.
But the driver's own preference, whatever it may be, is not enough to settle the issue. The trade unions take a wider view which must be based on concern at the decay of learning. The need for a driver to complete his record in his own hand strengthens the case for an educational system geared to produce people who know how to read and write and how to count.
While there was time, Mr Law might also have objected to the athstitution of thP EEC control book for the British record book that had previously seemed adequate. On the new daily sheet, the driver has to trace a continuous line which drops or rises to one of four different levels according to what he is doing at the time. Instead of a verbal description of each activity, or lack of activity, the form now has a simplified drawing of a bed, a chair, a steering wheel and what looks like a communication from the Inland Revenue.
Modern methods
Modern methods of teaching have evidently taken over here. The picture replaces the word. Any psycho-analyst would be able to demonstrate that the symbols are highly charged with eroticism and in other ways provide a powerful stimulus to the imagination. With their assistance, the driver is encouraged to expand their scope by sketching in a foaming tankard after a pub session, or inventing whatever sign he thinks appropriate to represent an evening with his girl friend.
From a limited acquaintance with examiners, one can anticipate that they will not be amused. Their profession makes them unlike the rest of us, who would be only too pleased to have some relief from a monotonous series of straight lines indicating the trivial round and the common task, but devoid of any gleam of personality.
Unkind c.-itics allege that many drivers' records deserve to rank as tolerably skilful works of fiction. This is not, of course, the object of the exercise, but there ought to be nothing to prevent a driver from treating his records as works of art. If he makes them lurid enough, he might even be assisted with a grant from the Arts Council.