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HAULIERS GO OVER THE TOP

8th June 1995, Page 7
8th June 1995
Page 7
Page 7, 8th June 1995 — HAULIERS GO OVER THE TOP
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

hy are we all so ambivalent when it comes to speeding? Of course no one does it without a good reason: "The road was safe...there wasn't much traffic...visibility was fine..." Anyway, truck and coach drivers are professionals: speeders drive hot hatchbacks, not 38-tonners, right? Wrong. The DOT survey Vehicle Speeds in Great Britain 1994 shows that the road transport industry is in no danger of being blinded by the light from its own halo. Item:15% of all coaches sampled on the motorway exceeded 70mph "despite the widespread fitting of speed limiters set to 70mph." The DOT's explanation of why coaches are still exceeding the 70mph top speed limit is: "This may be due to the fact that some of the buses (sic) sampled were not fitted with limiters and that some limiters may allow vehicles to travel slightly over 70mph." Well, would you believe it. Some people still aren't fitting limiters, even when the law says they should. And among those that do, some operators are disconnecting them, or simply setting them above the required limit. Amazing! Judging by the survey, the situation is no better among HGVs. On the motorway "25% of HGVs exceeded their 60mph limit with a slightly greater proportion of larger HGVs speeding". Does this imply that 25% of the HGVs that should be fitted with limiters don't have them? Or maybe that the limiters fitted to 25% of HGVs have mysteriously stopped working—or that all those speeding trucks were simply going downhill? There's no way of knowing: in isolation the facts are next to useless.

What we do know, according to the DOT figures, is that the greatest incidence of speeding happens off the motorway. Fat lot of good limiters are doing there. At the risk of appearing to condone HGV speeding, isn't it time to look again at single and dual carriageway HGV limits, not least with the advent of 56mph limiters on all new heavies above 12 tonnes? Otherwise the answer to speeding comes back to the reason why drivers do it— because they can. And why can they? Because at the present level of enforcement the odds are that they'll get away with it. According to Road Safety Minister Steven Norris: "Far too many drivers are driving at inappropriate speeds. The challenge is now to persuade them that speeding is every bit as anti-social as drink driving," With all due respect Minister, when Joe Soap haulier has a client screaming down his cabphone he is unlikely to consider the moral implications of speeding. If you want to stop him speeding you'll have to convince him that the odds have changed. Licence revocations and hefty fines will cure the speeding habit like a dose of salts.

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