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Barber shop quartette
Page 56
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WITH MORE than a suspicion of irony, somebody has given the latest tangle of legislation the label of "Drivers' Hours Harmonising Regulations." There is little in the provisions to lustify the description.
However, as if to emphasise the harmony and to complete the impression of the barber shop quartette, the Department Df Transport, in its explanatory booklet, provides the performers with four parts which it has cleverly abstracted from the law-makers' cacophony.
There are domestic journeys under EEC legislation; international ourneys under EEC legislation; domestic journeys under British egislation; and various permutations on the preceding three.
The booklet, says the Department, tries to present the requirements of each part in a simple, easily understood manner. The authors have indeed imposed the appearance of order on an anarchic bundle of parliamentary and community decisions.
With patience, operators and drivers will usually be able to work Jut what the requirements are on hours and records in any given set Df circumstances and at any given date. They may even aspire to pass examinations in the subject. A new course will be added — has probably already been added — to the growing curriculum of studies on road transport.
For anybody who comes across it for the first time, the Ministry )uide will continue to resemble a piece of surrealistic literature or a scene from the theatre of the absurd. The greater the success in Providing drivers with a safe route through a minefield, the more Dizarre the document looks to the outsider.
He will understand that some control of drivers' hours is iesirable. It is not difficult also for him to accept that there will be axceptions and variations. The task of government, as he sees it, is to make the conditions as simple and unambiguous as possible.
Without some knowledge of the twists and turns in the negotia:ions leading to the new Regulations, it will seem to him that the authorities have deliberately made the law so complicated that Jltimately they are almost as much in the dark as everybody else.
*Jo great confidence
As the booklet itself points out, the Department has in some Places had to give its own version of what is meant. It does so with lo great confidence, for "it must be understood that interpretation A the law can only finally be settled by the Courts."
This is no mere judicial formality. For offences there is a -naximum fine of £200. Convictions could jeopardise the operator's icence or the driver's hgv licence. The Department may give the ivrong advice with impunity. The operator or his driver will pay the Penalty.
Past experience in the UK may encourage the hope that this situation will not arise. If an infringement of the law takes place :hrough a genuine confusion over the meaning, magistrates and icensing authorities are usually tolerant. There is much less axperience — and what there is may be less reassuring — about what happens in similar circumstances abroad.
To the innocent eye, some of the items in the guide are inclur merely to add to the confusion and hazards. One example is introduction, towards the end of the part dealing with EEC int( ational rules, of the Variations to be introduced by the Europo agreement known as AETR.
Where it applies, the rest period between two days' work can be split so that part of it is taken while the vehicle is on a ferry train. The weekly rest period can be 24 hours instead of 29 hot. and in some cases the maximum period of continuous driving be increased from 4 to 41/2 hours. There are also differences in requirements for control books and tachographs.
When the operator already has to cope with his own countr legislation as well as that of the EEC, the introduction of yet anot variety seems a gratuitous turn of the screw. The few operators v, had heard of AETR may have hoped it would be forgotten.
The agreement has been reached by members of the EEC and nine other European countries. In spite of this, for journeys wit the EEC it can be ignored, but not for journeys across the EEC tc from one of the outside nine.
As a slight additional complication, the guide points out tl AETR does not become operational until February 13 1979. Ul that date, drivers must keep to the EEC international rules.
As they approach the end of their task, the authors of the gu show more and more clearly the strain under which they labouring. The resources of the language become inadequate.
The result may be seen in the choice of "mixed driving" as I heading for the final part. It is an endeavour to find a name something outside the experience of the layman, who cannot ea: understand why drivers who are doing the same job day after di but not always in the same country, should have to go through su gyrations in adjusting their time-scales.
Permissive overtones
The permissive overtones in the name do not help him to foc on its meaning, and the definition proferred by the Ministry he even less. Mixed driving, we are told, is the "driving of vehicles more than one of the first three parts."
Finding difficulty with this baffling message, the more pati( reader may try to work one or two examples of mixed driving himself. More likely than not, he will end up with the disturbi image of his local dustmen exercising their privilege of a maximi. of 10 hours daily driving all the way to Greece or Norway.
He will he tempted to ask the dustmen to take the Departmen explanatory booklet with them.