DRIVING YOU MAD?
Page 26
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• "How's my driving?" might not be a question that many truck drivers feel they want or need to ask passing motorists, but that is what some will have to do in future.
Texaco, Rentokil and CityLink are three of the companies that have signed up for a scheme under which the back of many of their vehicles will carry signs asking just that question, with a freephone number attached. Texaco already has the signs on 56 tankers operating from 11 depots. The idea, already widely used in the US, is not intended to put professional drivers in the firing line, says a spokesman for How's My Driving, a company set up by millionaire businessman Ross Smith.
The spokesman says: "We know that commercial drivers are in fewer accidents and that the professional driver is statistically much safer. We are not out to get drivers. But this turns a complaint into a piece of bureaucracy. It means that instead of raging on the road a motorist with a bee in his bonnet can rage on the telephone—much more safely. We certainly do not believe that a driver with an unblemished 20-year record should suffer because of one telephone complaint from a passing motorist." J The Freight Transport Association is planning a similar freephone number as part of its £150,000 Transport Image Campaign due to be launched later this year (CM 2-8 Nov).
• For owner-driver Dove Stride, "How's my driving ?" signs are not practical or helpful. "For a start owner drivers use other people's trailers so we can't put signs on them," he says. But wouldn't have thought there is much point in inviting comment anyway. information might be a better idea, explaining to car • drivers about the speed limit we have or telling them that if they can't see the truck driver's mirror the truck driver can't see them."
• Stride, who operates internationally to 'France and Spain, adds: "if people really want to comment they are going to do it in any case. And the comments are invariably bad. I can't see
• • them ringing to praise truck drivers."