LIMELIGHT
Page 34
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by JANUS
ONE or two recent references have been made to the exposed position in which the road-vehicle operator finds himself, compelled as he is to carry out the greater part of his working activities in full public view. By comparison, the ordinary trader or manufacturer leads a secluded life, with no spectators to draw attention to his mistakes or his shortcomings. If he is dishonest, he can even deceive his customers by giving short weight or by providing an inferior or defective article.
It is not suggested that traders make a general practice of this kind of thing, but they are able to gloss over faults in a way that is not possible for the transport operator. His task is to carry traffic from one place to another, and usually to deliver it by a certain date. Any failure is immediately apparent. There may be good reasons and the customer may be tolerant, but it is impossible to deny that in this instance the service offered has not come up to specification.
The authorities also have several means of keeping the operator under supervision, and do, not hesitate to use those means. Fortunately for him, they are not so exacting or overweening as appears to be the case in some parts of India. Reports from that country speak of roadside check-posts at which lorries are kept waiting for hours at a time and money is " extorted " with the threat of unloading the vehicle for a complete check.
ANOTHER complaint from India is that, at the point of entry into certain provinces, the authorities insist on the payment of a substantial tax. A refund is promised at the point of exit, but is never given, often on the plea that the money is not available. Naturally enough, Indian operators are indignant and suspect that they are being deliberately harassed. British operators are not always satisfied with the treatment they receive at the hands of vehicle inspectors, and it may be some comfort to know that there are other operators worse off than themselves.
The right of the customers and the authorities to control his activities is recognized by every reasonable operator. He is less easily reconciled to the frequent and sweeping expressions of opinion from the general public. He must feel at times that everybody in the country assumes the right to criticize him, his vehicles and his activities in general, and that practically everybody spends a good deal of time in exercising that right.
Sometimes the criticism is just, and deserves to be heard and acted upon. More often it stems from some momentarily disgruntled road user who has been inconvenienced by a lorry, from some enthusiast with a cause that is hampered by the presence of commercial vehicles on the road, or simply by a crank whose reasoning is difficult to follow. Whatever shape the complaint takes, or from whatever source, it adds its quota to the general impression.
Because the road operator is so much in the limelight, the authorities cannot ignore the protests that reach them, and must in fact treat them seriously whatever their own private opinion. This in turn encourages the public to suppose that the complaints have some substance. A kind of feedback process engenders still more heat, so that before very long the hapless operators find they are facing a full-scale campaign.
A moment's thought would often help the public to B8
realize that there is no solid basis for their criticism, and that they are making a large issue out of very little. The crew of a special-type vehicle who happen to be caught on a busy road must feel the resentment building up all round them, in spite of the nervously apologetic notices they sometimes carry. The inconvenience they cause -is seldom considerable, and is usually much less than the congestion that in many streets is a regular occurrence.• The disadvantage for the special-type vehicle is that it is a large, lumbering, and therefore tempting target.
THE first impulse of the motorist who finds himself impeded by a commercial vehicle, to however slight a degree, is to argue that such a vehicle should be kept off certain roads, or forbidden to run at certain times, or that the traffic should in any case more properly be carried by some other form of transport. There is no sensible reason why these restrictions should not be applied to him rather than to the offending vehicle, but there is equally no way in which he can be persuaded of this.
Most typical of all is the agitation about diesel fumes. Now, these are certainly annoying and everything possible should be done to minimize them. They cause more concern than is justified simply because the vehicle that emits them is so conspicuous an object. Paradoxically, the fact that the vehicle is in the open air and can plainly be seen by everybody is the best guarantee that, in fact, its fumes are harmless.
Paradoxically again, the dangers of pollution have formed the spearhead of the complaints about the diesel vehicle, until even the operators and some of the authorities had begun to have doubts. Enough public anxiety was created to justify setting up solemn bodies of inquiry and attempting to find a machine suitable for measuring the degree of pollution. ; Apparently, the attempts have not met with much success, and the results now corning in from some of the inquiries may provide the explanation.
1140ST of the reports are restrained in their tone. Very properly, they avoid any possible implication that the badly maintained diesel engine is not a nuisance and a possible source of danger. However carefully worded, they can hardly disguise the conclusion that most of the concern about pollution and health is unnecessary or exaggerated.
The annual report of the council of the British Medical Association refers to experiments designed to test the toxic effects of nitrogen dioxide. Concentrations of up to 50 parts per million were used. Further tests showed that the proportion was 0.1 parts per million even in Blackwall Tunnel, where the concentration of pollution from motor vehicles is higher than in any street. By a stroke of irony, very large quantities of carbon monoxide in the tunnel came almost exclusively from petrol engines. The council are left convinced that in confined spaces and busy streets the petrol engine is a more serious hazard than the diesel engine.
The difficulty in measuring diesel pollution may simply be that there is so little to measure. Very likely this will not stop the complaints, many of them from car owners who, if anything, are the more guilty.