BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 100
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BY THE HAWK
• One of the Hawk's all-time favourites, the Leyland 340Li Cabriolet, is about to lose its main attraction. The convertible is to be recabbed and will enter service with haulage firm Geoffrey Reyner minus its leather upholstery and canvas top . . . and I never even got a ride in the thing.
• Another African bus story, this time from Johannesburg. A school driver, fed up with unruly pupils, is alleged to have threatened to drive them over a nearby dam.
No doubt sorely tried school bus drivers all over the world regularly make similar threats. But this threat was made on the anniversary of an accident in which 42 pupils from the same school had died when a school bus actually did drive over the same dam. Pupils were said to be "very, very upset" by the incident, being investigated by the Johannesburg Transport Department.
• That old faithful, the AA handbook, goes from strength to strength. The 1988-89 edition has broken all records with an initial print order of 4.820 million and, says the AA, consumed 1,250 tonnes of paper, 16.5 tonnes of ink and seven tonnes of adhesive.
What worries the Hawk is the AA's claim that more than 80 40-tonne trucks will distribute the handbook around the country. Does the AA know something we don't? • Diesel Car, a new magazine to be launched next month, claims that the inventor Rudolf Diesel may have been murdered by the German secret service just before the Second World War to stop him from giving his secrets to the British. Gott in Himmel. . .
• Are you worried by reports of fights between bus drivers competing for passengers (CM, 17-23 March)? Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
A reader tells me that in Nairobi thousands of privatelyowned minibuses, called matatus, have been classed by Kenya's transport minister as "more deadly than Aids". They are poorly maintained, driven by fatigued crews, and bear names like "survival of the fittest" and "living devil". They habitually carry twice the permitted number of passengers by allowing them to ride on the (non-existent) top deck.
The worst accident so far this year involved a collision between three matatus which killed 31 people, and injured many others. This brings to mind a favourite bumper stick er which reads "You never know — heaven could be nearer than home".
Four years ago, President Daniel Arap Moi decided that something had to be done about what he called these "agents of death and destruction". Legislation was introduced which gave the police power to prohibit unroadworthy and overcrowded vehicles. The matatu operators promptly went on strike, leaving thousands of Nairobi commuters stranded. The legislation was soon revoked. Since then no Kenyan politician has dared to act.
• In a fit of charitable thanksgiving for the favourable exchange rate, Mercedes-Benz distributed Easter eggs to children in Northampton, Kettering, Wellingborough and Milton Keynes last week.
Each of the children who were unlucky enough to be hospitalised over Easter got the taste of a trucker's life with a large "Yorlde" Easter egg. Deliveries were made in Mercedes 207, 307 and 407 vans driven by members of the commercial vehicle and motoring press so they too could get the taste of a real van driver's life.
An inter-van fuel consumption competition was called off as the results were said by a Mercedes spokesman to be "unrepresentative". Perhaps we need more practice — say at Christmas — exchange rates permitting, of course. .
• The British people's gift of the Rover Group to British Aerospace has been greeted by roars of "Treachery" and warm congratulations from various parties. It now remains to be seen what this new megalith is called. Combine RG and BAe. Mmm . It has to be BARGE.