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BUBBLE REPUTATION
Page 114
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FOR the dramatist and the film writer the cafe on the trunk road provides an ideal setting with colourful characters and an abundance of incident. It is evidently the first place that comes into the mind of the radio and particularly the television producer when seeking a suitable background for a news story concerning road transport and commercial vehicles.
The Ministry of Transport has only to announce, as it did the other day, that it is to conduct a countrywide campaign of roadside checks on drivers' hours for microphones, cameras and interviewers to take to the road. In almost any transport care they are bound to find cheerful, uninhibited and talkative lorry drivers offering an attractive range ...of regional accents.
There is no harm in this as long as the interviewers do not delude themselves into thinking that they are canvassing genuine opinions. The average lorry driver enjoys letting his imagination loose. He has forms enough to fill in as it is and feels no compulsion to give a truthful answer when there is no penalty for doing otherwise.
FASHIONABLE REACTION
One fashionable reaction from a group of drivers faced with a microphone is to admit frankly to having exceeded the statutory number of hours and to add by way of excuse that this is the only possible way of making a living at the miserable rates of pay offered by operators and especially by hauliers. The theme has become familiar and its human interest makes it attractive to the compilers of programmes intended to comment on the news.
The drivers may derive amusement from finding a gullible interviewer. What they may not realize is that their words may be heard and their faces seen by millions of people who are for the most part prepared to accept as true whatever appears on television or in the newspapers.
Pleading poverty as a justification for breaking the law is not the best way of retaining a good reputation. Even at the present time reasonably well paid work is not hard to find. The viewing public may be inclined to think either that there is some discreditable reason for a driver to persist in a calling that does not bring him a living wage by legal means or that he is too lazy or unintelligent to improve his status.
More astute members of the public may note that the drivers who so cheerfully describe their agonising choice between destitu
tion and prosecution seldom actually admit what rates of pay they are enjoying. At best they will quote the theoretical minimum laid down in the current Road Haulage Wages Order and leave the impression that this is as much as any driver can hope for unless he is prepared to break the law.
This argument does not stand up to examination. The opposite point of view has been put recently by Mr. Hugh Clegg, a member of the Prices and Incomes Board. Addressing the annual meeting of the Drapers' Chamber of Trade, he said that many wages councils in present circumstances could cease to exist without necessarily leading to gross exploitation of labour.
Mr. Clegg then went on to select the Road Haulage Wages Council as an example of i body purporting to look after the interests of men whose average earnings were above the annual average in Britain. It was not obvious, he said, that such an industry needed the protection of a wages council.
Most people perhaps would not follow up the drivers' allegations even to this point. Those who do might easily come to the conclusion that most lorry drivers are guilty of working far longer than the law permits —they have confessed as much—and have no excuse whatever. In this frame of mind the public will put the worst possible interpretation on figures subsequently published by the Ministry to show what the latest series of checks has achieved.
HIGH ESTEEM
The general esteem for the lorry driver will not be improved as a result. That the present esteem is high is the verdict of the inquiry into public opinion recently carried out on behalf of the Road Haulage Association. If the statistics have any validity at all they must be accepted as proof that people in general rate the long-distance driver as better than all other types of road user in those characteristics which it is important for a driver to possess.
The cross-section of the public used for the inquiry were not asked whether in their opinion drivers were well paid or lawabiding. These are items of precise fact on which a mere opinion would have no bearing. It is reasonable to infer, however, that when people say they believe the lorry driver to be pre-eminently careful, intelligent, helpful, safety-conscious and so on, they must have in their minds the picture of a well-adjusted individual who derives satisfaction as' well as a good living from his work.
In the past the long-distance lorry driver has been given many romantic titles, the most familiar being that of a knight of the road. He can still enjoy them in spite of the occasional bad-tempered and even vitriolic articles and letters in the Press on the theme of the killer lorry and the reckless cowboy. His reputation has not been greatly damaged. This does not mean that he can safely leave it to look after itself.
THE RIGHT NOTE
The announcement from the Ministry has struck the right note. It is a "minority" of drivers who continue to work for long hours "in defiance of regulations which are designed to protect the public against the dangers of a tired driver at the wheel of a heavy vehicle." From the other drivers who make up the great majority the Ministry hopes for co-operation. Each driver who is stopped at a checkpoint will receive a personal message from the. Minister stressing responsibility for road safety.
Fair warning has been given even to the worst offenders. The Minister has under review the present restrictions on driving hours and any amendment will almost certainly mean a reduction. This might well seem an irrelevance if it were shown that drivers in general did not observe the law as it now stands.
Drivers are being given the opportunity to prove that this is not the case. It is important that they should prove it also to the satisfaction of the public. After sharp and sometimes prolonged criticism in certain sections of the Press has failed to make any material difference in the good reputation of the long-distance lorry driver, it would be ironical if he were to destroy it himself by the kind of frivolous comment given wide currency as the result of a television visit to a transport cafe.