Watching an episode of The Sweeney and spotting a few modern relics reminded me of my time behind the wheel of the Ford D1000. After just a week I could open tins just by squeezing them... I cringe when I think back to my early days behind the wheel. How close I came to creating and starring in major incidents due to a lack of care and attention or simple ignorance still makes me blush.
One job in particular was a stint for a fruit and veg company in south London in the 1970s. That company is still going, according to the internet, which is no small miracle. And probably little thanks to me. I got the job through a mate who worked there. I’d lied about my employment history; adding several months to my sole year of driving, to add a little more gravitas. I don’t know if it worked but if I was the benchmark for future employees there is a chance a broom might have got a job driving with the company. The company ran mainly Fords; Transits and D-series. I got a Ford D1000 16-tonner with in faded blue and a revamped flatbed body. Bought second hand, although I am guessing about that, it had been converted from its original status as a boxvan using an angle-grinder. The box was then used as a shed for discarded bread baskets. My first job was to remove all the newspapers from the bottom of the windscreen, which on closer inspection was a collection of Page 3s. This proved to be an error as wind crept in causing a permanent chill. Boxes of fruit and veg were loaded onto the back of the truck in the wee small hours from the warehouse and delivered to shops, restaurants and hotels across the south of England.
Steering a fully laden D1000 gave me arms like Popeye. I almost dislocated my right elbow trying to manoeuvre a fully laden truck on a tight roundabout towards the third exit. On the positive side, I didn’t use a tin opener for three years. By the time I got behind the wheel of the battered truck, the Perkins V8 7.7-litre four-cylinder diesel engine had been through the ringer. According to one of the other drivers the engine had been rebuilt. With 170hp from 2,600rpm the wagon groaned and lurched into action every morning, warming up at around 15 miles after expelling several purple plumes of smoke.
Rumour had it that the engine boasted 540Nm of torque... A coach potato with emphysema would provide stiff competition climbing Box Hill. Descents required both feet on the brake pedal, a parachute to slow it down to national speed limits and closed eyes. Mark Gredzinski’s review of the D-series for Heritage Commercials (published online 1/3/2012) is particularly glowing, with a tilting cab, and the more robust D1000s having “American influences” like “‘west coast’ mirrors” and “a custom cab package that included extra padding, trim and sound deadening, sun visors and a dual passenger seat”. Gredzinski does make a telling reference regards the Perkins engine, compared to the Cummins and in particular the 6-litre 128hp six-cylinder units available. It was noisier delivering “a healthy V8 growl”. Transmission on the aging D1000 was a Turner five-speed synchromesh gearbox. I know this because a mechanic was called out to tow it back in when the clutch went.
The work was alright but the early starts aged me quickly and provided an addition to instant coffee topped up with sugar and cans of pop. As the Winter of Discontent loomed and the price of food increased with inflation I did notice the loads getting lighter and customers disappearing off the delivery sheet.
Eventually the inevitable happened and the ‘last in first out’ policy kicked in. If I learned anything it was how to be economical with the truth and incorporate the odd white lie to cover my tracks, although honesty also worked. I left a little wiser. Luckily I walked into another job driving to West Germany and back and was glad for the change.
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Drivers’ attitude to having a wee can be spotted and smelt at many a roadside layby, so what is the answer to getting caught short? Long, long ago, in a truck park far, far away I was pretending to steer around the fetid tarmac with my son. He then lost interest and started to look around the cab. He wondered out loud where the toilet was. Astute enough question from a six-year-old to confirm that he gets his brains from his mother and looks from me.
I glanced around my one bedroom maisonette on wheels. Bed, TV, microwave, fridge, chair, desk and wardrobe (of sorts) were all present and correct, so why not a toilet? Water closets in confined spaces are not as daft as it might sound. As a child I had the misfortune to spend my summer holidays in caravans on windswept fields somewhere between the A1 and the east coast. Each shed-on-wheels was fitted with a chemical lavatory. My abiding memory was the smell, my God, the smell. And that was before anyone used it. I never considered a chamber pot could be fitted within the confines of a 2.5 by 2.5metre truck cab. A quick glance online revealed a plethora of portable commodes. From a cheap fold up seat with disposable bag to a bucket or you can buy something more robust that boasts a lid and chemicals. For most truckers, and by that I mean men, having a slash is a practical activity that employs minimal privacy and incorporates any inanimate obstacle that might be available. For a brown trout it’s a case of hanging on until reaching somewhere more suitable like the services. For ladies the process is more principled, at least that is what I am told, but when push comes to shove they take their chances. Many drivers suffer unwittingly from urinary retention brought on by years of holding it in. It is a medical condition where you are unable to completely empty the bladder, it leads to infection and can be potentially life-threatening. My first brush with it came back in the 1980s when international work was plentiful. I’d catch the Dover-Calais boat with a bunch of other British and Irish truckers who also hauled for a German company. We formed a small clique that met regularly on the Sunday night ferry for a few hours before heading our separate ways. Part of that group was a husband and wife team from Barnsley. They were always heading somewhere east, and usually couldn’t pronounce their intended destination. The standing joke was that they delivered everything to ‘T’Ghent’ as it was the only town anyone could remember them saying coherently. The husband, a dour Yorkshireman bereft of an extensive vocabulary, usually drove down to Dover. On arrival the wife, polite and self-effacing, usually emptied a wok-like pan against a tyre before they got the paperwork authorised. He refused to stop lest they miss the ferry so if she was desperate she was forced to draw the curtain, squat on the bottom bunk to take aim into the aforementioned container. One Sunday as I lined up to board the ferry the Yorkshire Dream Team rolled in with the wife behind the wheel. She caught my eye and waved with a huge grin. From the passenger door emerged the husband soaking wet and a face like thunder. Feeling tired from a heavy weekend tending ferrets and whippets he let his wife drive down to Dover. At Peterborough he wanted to stop to point Percy at the porcelain, or hedge, or tyre. She refused. After a blazing row that lasted the rest of the A1, and fast approaching Dartford, he was desperate. With great deliberation he clambered onto on the bottom bunk with the pan and drew the curtain. Once congregated on the ferry she ran us through events. She might’ve braked or swerved, run over a pothole or steered through an adverse camber, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what caused her husband of 15 years to miss the carefully placed vessel. He’d rolled sideways, knocked over what had already been spilled from the receptacle and managed to cover himself, the bottom bunk and his sleeping bag. He emerged from behind the curtain with face like Geoffrey Boycott. Not one word was uttered for the rest of the journey. In this specific case a portable toilet would have come in handy. Parked up for the night drivers face a simple choice of either wandering around outside half naked in the cold trying to avoid mud, oil or dog poo or remaining indoors and utilising a plastic bottle. I’m for the latter although I’d be lying if I said my aim was true every time. Still sat in the driver’s seat my son appeared to be waiting for an answer. “Sorry,” I replied, before adding, “they don’t fit them in lorries.” The panel that make up the Health and Safety Executive’s Myth Buster has sat in contemplation to the age old conundrum; ‘Should a truck driver give the keys to their wagon to another person when unloading or loading for health and safety reasons’ The list of unexplained mysteries is long; Mary Celeste, Bigfoot, Bermuda Triangle, Robbie Savage, Lord Lucan...
Thankfully it’s not the remit of the Myth Busters Challenge Panel, chaired by Judith Hackitt CBE and with 14 members, which can be found here, to contemplate and rule on ITV and The Sun's obsession with Ant and/or Dec. Instead it sits under this ‘Terms of reference’: The Myth Busters Challenge Panel provides a mechanism for anyone (whether on behalf of a company or organisation, or as an individual) to challenge advice or a decision taken in the name of health and safety that they believe to be disproportionate or inaccurate. It will consider cases where advice is given by non-regulators, citing insurance companies, health and safety consultants, suppliers, contractors and employers, who “quote health and safety as the reason to do or not do something, or where the challenger considers the advice be inaccurate or disproportionate”. The panel offers an opinion on whether “the advice was correct and proportionate in terms of its interpretation of the requirements of health and safety legislation”. And so to the case in question: Transport Law Solicitor: Esteemed members of the panel, my client has been prevented from performing his duties as a ‘lorry driver’ by repeated requests to ‘hand in me keys’ to any ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’ when performing the duty of offloading cargo by means of a raised dock, door, ramp and pump truck. Esteemed members of the panel, my client has taken umbrage and wishes for a ruling on said matter. Panel member #7: I think he is saying if a truck driver is asked to give keys to another person when unloading or loading for health and safety reasons, should the truck driver do so, and are there any insurance considerations in handing over the keys to a complete stranger... Panel member #9: Hear hear... TLS: That is correct, esteemed member of the panel. Panel member #2: Thank you, we will consider the issue at large and report accordingly. TLS: Thank you. Sometime later the panel return from lunch and deliveries its decision: “It is a widely operated practice in loading/unloading bays to operate a key exchange scheme which prevents the vehicle being driven away whilst loading/unloading is taking place. The complainant needs to talk to his own employer about better means of securing personal belongings in the vehicle rather than seeking to change an industry wide effective practice.” Limited by working time, activity monitored and policed by time, and wages paid according to time. Lorry drivers and hauliers can ill-afford to lose any time through digital tachographs. Back in the day, yes, I’m down with the 30-somethings, when analogue tachographs were king I used a stopwatch to record my daily rest period. The paper disc recorded everything.
The stopwatch was employed after an employee in Vehicle and Operator Services Agency colours (now the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency) with a magnifying glass spent an hour examining two weeks of ‘graphs before declaring that on three occasions I’d not taken the required ‘daily rest period’. “By how much?” I asked. “It does not matter,” he replied with a more serious tone implying that insolence would be met with a larger fine and a spell on the naughty step, “you have not taken the required daily rest period, therefore you have driven illegally for an accumulative period of eight hours.” I ventured again with a more serious tone suggesting I was prepared to wait all day if I had to for an answer. “Using an ‘accumulative’ estimate, by how long are my breaks short of the required time set out in law?” My foe was grinding his teeth. He reiterated my offence using a slower more deliberate pace of speech usually reserved for ex-Pats ordering fish and chips in Alicante. I took a deep breath and began my reply. Tiring of the debate his colleague waded in with: “Approximately six minutes.” Conversation then switched to criminal intent over error of judgement. The fact the offense was thrice showed, in their eyes, I’d deliberately shortened breaks to gain an ‘advantage’. I was eventually fined but no points. Shortening breaks is not something you can do with digital tachographs but watching the minute tick over then moving a short distance before it reaches 30 seconds without recording any extra driving time is. The minute is dictated by the majority of activity within it. For example, 31 seconds of cross hammers plays 29 seconds of driving equals a full minute of cross hammers on the recorded time despite the vehicle recording movement. This is why is queuing in traffic you can lose several minutes by crawling, stopping, crawling, stopping as traffic you move along. Of course you can print and record any ‘incident’. If you did that every time you stopped at temporary traffic lights or waited for a BMW driver to park you’d be littered with hundreds of tear offs at the end of the week and causing ecological mayhem with an increased demand for paper. You lose some but you also win some. How many of you move a truck from a parking space to the fuel pumps, or off a loading bay when tipped, while maintaining a ‘daily rest period’? A ‘colleague’ said that while on an official break 'this person' used two movements, the first came after 15 minutes so it was a hiding to nothing, to inch across the motorway services from a wide-load parking space to the pumps while maintaining a daily rest period. My ‘colleague’ estimated that more than 15 minutes were saved. Fifteen minutes spent queuing for the pumps, handing in the fuel card, filling the tank, swearing at someone, having a wee, assessing the meal deal and any two-for-one offers, paying, getting back in the cab, checking the phone then going. How can this be right? Drivers lose time all day long, and as they are governed by time, it needs addressing. Digital tachograph manufacturers need to up their game and dissect a minute into four 15 second sections or even six 10 second periods, so that drivers have a more accurate accounting system for their time on and off the road. Analogue tachographs were accurate, digital tachographs need to be accurate too. When healthy and safety becomes a bureaucratic hindrance rather than accomplishing its original purpose truck drivers need to stand up and be counted because it can save time and money. A site induction for visiting lorry drivers is fast becoming the norm. Company policy requires a petty bureaucrat (usually a security guard or weighbridge operative) to illustrate the obvious regards one-way systems, loading bay traffic lights and importance of keeping to pathways in plain language that even a trucker might understand.
Health and safety first emerged as legislation in 1833 with the role of ‘inspectors’ established as part of the Factories Act. They visited sweatshops to help ‘prevent injury and overworking’ of child textile workers. By 1871 the act was extended to cover all workplaces. The culture we recognise today stemmed from the 1974 Flixborough chemical plant explosion, which resulted in 28 deaths. The Health and Safety at Work etc Act was introduced and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was formed on 1 January 1975. Over the years its presence has been felt all areas of industry from exposure to lead to improving offshore safety on oilrigs. For the 2015/2016 season HSE is focussed on Display Screen Equipment (DSE) related ill health, lone working and site visits, work related road risk, and work related stress. All four areas are relative to truck drivers. Any truck driver with 40 years plus holding a steering wheel can vaguely chart the introduction of hi-vis, hard hats and safety glasses. Despite being judged as stupid and ignorant by security staff and transport managers, truck drivers are nevertheless expected to remember different procedures on numerous sites and adhere to all rules regardless of how badly thought out something might be. An induction at a renowned public limited company ended with a multiple choice questionnaire that included two realistic options, so getting the compulsory eight out of 10 wasn’t guaranteed. You were allowed two attempts to pass or face being eternally banned from site pending an appeal. Overzealous staff policed the site, which required drivers to wear steel-toe-capped boots (not rigour boots), waterproof hi-vis trousers, waterproof hi-vis jacket with sleeves, gloves, hard hat, air-tight goggles and dust mask while delivering. When you entered yard via narrow entrance and you could only exit the cab to open/close the rear doors before backing onto the loading bay. Once empty you left via the opposite end of the walled enclosure. Two problems; a blind-side reverse onto the loading bay and no space to straighten up. You had to back right onto the loading bay before you could move forward to straighten up. Designed and built by Swedes, notorious for driving on the other side of the road since 3rd September 1967, no one thought this might present a problem for the Brits. Reversing blind weeds out the wheat from the chaff but the process adds time to deliveries and increases the chances of damaging company property. As a busy site being fifth in the queue easily added an hour to the job. Scrapes began to appear on the offside wall and back three-quarters of the trailers adding to the stress. For some drivers it was too much. Several, who’d heard how frustrating the gig was fuelled by everyday trucker gossip, failed the test deliberately. Transport managers had banned driver’s park up at a nearby truckstop to swap trailers with those allowed on site. For me the best drivers are the ones not scared to pipe up when they see a box ticking exercise exceed common sense. After trying for 20 minutes to back onto the bay complete with goggles and dust mask one driver pranged the trailer. To add insult to injury he was spotted without the dust mask covering his mouth. In true jobsworth fashion the driver was warned. When he got out the truck to argue the point he was banned. Refusing to accept his punishment he stood firm and called out the jobsworth’s supervisor. He explained that for all the emphasis on health and safety and PPE, drivers then had to perform one of the most dangerous moves; the blindside reverse. The supervisor nodded: “Yes, we’ve had some near misses...” At this point the driver showed the supervisor a much damaged trailer. The supervisor, with senior managements backing, instigated a trial with trucks ‘going around the other way’ so drivers could back onto the bay from the offside. This saved time and eradicated damage; the trial became permanent. Despite making life easier for the rest of us, the driver in question never actually saw the fruits of his labour. Following a spate with the transport manager about the aforementioned damaged trailer he left and joined a well-known supermarket, where I am reliably informed, health and safety runs wild. Properly considered health and safety measures make the workplace safer for those not blessed with common sense or chose to ignore it; contrived policies just drive everyone mad. How often have you been sat there wondering how in the name of God it can take so long to tip? Unlike many deliveries to warehouses, this one requires me to unload the trailer.
After lining up 26 pallets of a popular household product into two neat rows I help Liam, a warehouse operative, check the contents. Considering the load consists of 2,912 identical items this shouldn’t take long... Liam inspects the delivery note. It has one line on it, hardly War and Peace. Liam brushes aside his fringe then draws a handheld device from his hip with a speed that won’t have troubled Clint Eastwood. He sets off along the first line of pallets scanning barcodes. Liam suddenly stops midway to chat to a co-worker, both then wander off somewhere. When Liam returns sometime later he starts scanning the first pallet again. “Everything OK,” I ask. Over the next 10 minutes I discover that he wouldn’t invite fellow employees to join him in the pub, and if his management team ran a pub everyone would all be sober. The equipment – like his handheld scanner – rarely works, the company is understaffed, its minimum wage and everyone who started when he did had already left. I’d have settled for a no. “When did you start?” I ask. “Two months ago,” he says. After a pause I offer my own recent involvement with his employer: “I’ve only been here for seven hours.” This delay is the latest of several in the past couple of weeks, I want to tell him that I’d been holed up in a windowless room in Hatfield for three hours, ignored in a waiting room in Derby for two hours, told to come back later (no actual time given) by security at an RDC in Bristol, and sat in my cab for two hours and 43 minutes in Glasgow before being told to back onto a loading bay and then to wait for another two. I want to scream at Liam that I wasted a 15 hour spread over and didn’t even get to register a split rest. In each case I kept my end of the bargain and arrived on time. Yet it seems indicative that the driver’s time is treated with the least importance despite the fact that within the intricate chain that binds the movement of goods it is only the much-maligned driver who is restricted by time and motion, as defined by law. Alright, I’ve ignored Working Time Directive, which is another anguish altogether. In waiting rooms across the UK truck drivers take a break from watching porn on their phones to buy crisps and coffee from vending machines, use unflushed toilets and ignore the continuous loop of Sky News predicting doom on flat screen TVs. Most drivers get this once a day, sometimes twice. The amount of time lost to delays reduces driving time but increases each shift. How many times have you lost a precious 15-hour day, while not even getting close to nine hours driving let alone 10? Drivers are human beings; they’re not impervious to the crippling frustration caused by poorly run RDCs unable to keep its own schedule, only to have salt scrubbed into the wound by indifferent staff. Perhaps the best way around it is to see it for what it really is; a colossal joke. At one site a bored driver loudly suggested he might put a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Transport enquiring about delays for lorry drivers delivering to warehouses across the UK but wouldn’t bother because it would lead to an official denial that waiting times might appear to be at an all-time high but actually weren’t. All arrival and departure times are logged by well-trained and polite security gate staff thus producing by default a Key Performance Indicator for RDCs to ensure it keeps the wheels of industry moving in a timely fashion. The wind-up merchant suggested bosses of RDCs failing to turn around trucks promptly would feature in the New Year Honours list. The recipient of the trucker’s indignation merely shrugged, before shouting: “BAY 34”. A trucker bounded across the waiting room, collected the truck keys and signed paperwork then left in a hurry. The happy mood dissipated, drivers got back to their phones and Googled ‘MILF’. Mention prolonged waiting times to a driver and most shrug declaring that they don’t care as they’re paid by the hour. Unless it’s Friday, then they have an opinion... Liam didn’t seem the empathetic type so l left him to battle on with his scanner. He swore a few times and disappeared again before reappearing with another one and starting again. The latest omnishambles regards Government’s planned £250m alternative to Operation Stack is made into a new morality tale for today’s tired and bitter generation of truck drivers. Welcome to The Rope and Sheet Inn… Allow me to tell you a story. Every day the landlord of The Rope and Sheet Inn serves a quart of beer from a barrel. It’s a regional beer favoured by two individuals who, after a long day at work, like nothing more than to kick back with their ‘regional beer’, let’s call it the ‘Medway Mild’, and assess the days’ good deeds. There is a problem though. Well, two actually. First, once the bung is removed from the barrel it cannot be put back in. Time and tide waits for no man. Second, there is only one pint glass. The landlord hasn’t enough funds or space to store a second. So its first come first served. Right on cue its Big Dave. “Pint of Medway Mild, if you will,” Big Dave asks the landlord. “Coming right up,” replies the landlord. He puts the pint glass underneath the barrel and removes the bung. As the glass fills in comes Fossil. After a long day at work he likes nothing more than to relax with his ‘Medway Mild’ to assess the days’ activities and see where he might improve both personally and professionally. “Landlord, a pint of Medway Mild please?” he asks. “Just pouring the first now,” says the landlord. Suddenly the enormity of that reply kicks in and Fossil is crestfallen, he’s too late. The only pint glass in the pub is now filled. The beer is still running. The pint glass overflows. The beer is still running. That refreshingly fruity Medway Mild is now dripping onto the floor. Fossil glances around to see if something can be done. Big Dave gives Fossil a nod. The landlord still holds the glass. The beer is still running. Medway Mild is now making its way slowly across the floor towards the table and chair. The beer is still running. Eventually the quart runs out. The only pint glass in the pub is full. The landlord lifts the glass onto the bar and places it in front of Big Dave. “That’ll be £12.50, you get a £3 food voucher, here’s a token for the shower, we only take cash,” exclaims the landlord. Fossil has no beer, he’s welcome to buy food without a voucher and pay for a shower but he will need to travel to another pub to get a drink. So, what is the solution?
Well, let’s have a look. Unfortunately the landlord only gets a barrel with a bung so once the drink flows he’s committed to the cause. However, he knows it’s a quart so if he’s careful he’ll be able to capture half of the beer in the only glass the public house possesses. If he could find a way to invest in a tap or a second pint glass he could serve that second pint of beer, and potentially raise the revenue of the public house. Unfortunately the brewery isn’t interested in the future only the here and now. It has looked at the books and found the landlord only serves one pint of beer each day so doesn’t justify the extra investment. The bank suggests he buys less beer to reduce overheads. But without the investment in new equipment he cannot without meeting the daily demand. It only comes in a quart-sized barrel with a bung. He’s asked the brewery about a barrel with a tap but it costs more and he cannot afford it. Besides there is no room to put a second pint glass without encroaching on space he uses to perch the barrel. He will need a longer shelf, and that means investment in infrastructure. His planning application was turned down on the grounds of the shelf may bring in more custom, and adversely affect the tranquillity of the neighbours. More noise after hours, that sort of thing. So A and B do not count. The answer is C; do nothing, because that is all that ever seems to happen. The pub has the custom and demand and goods to provide the people with what need but no one wants more of the same as it’s all rather unseemly. All that is really required is some joined up thinking and the ability to see the problem for what it really is; a lack of leadership. Cast The Rope and Sheet Inn Ashford Truckstop Landlord Owner of Ashford Truckstop Big Dave and Fossil Lorry drivers making their way through Kent looking for somewhere to park The Pint Glass A Parking Space Barrel of Medway Mild Food, drink, utility bills, rent, tax, VAT, wages Bung Lack of investment Brewery Banks, government, local authorities, politicians, planning applications, and NIMBYs Producer, writer and contents owner Secret Trucker The end Driving mode in the latest iPhone 11 is the first step towards stopping people using mobile phones behind the wheel, now professional lorry drivers need to set an example. Four lanes of motorway down the southbound M1 towards junction 25 and three are taken up by trucks. Cars and vans go bumper-to-bumper in the fourth lane trying to get through the rolling bottleneck. They jostle for position like Dads at a free buffet.
Sat behind the truck in lane two I ease off the juice and wait as patiently as a lorry driver can with timed delivery slots at RDCs to meet. The wagon in lane two is flashed back into lane one leaving the truck in lane three. I flash the lights to show there is space for the truck to come back across into lane two but nothing. Best part of a minute passes and the truck is still sat in lane three. I’m not undercutting. That’s dangerous. Another truck looking to move across from lane one to lane two means I go to lane three. Eventually our third lane hogger drifts over to occupy the second lane. I catch my first glimpse of the driver. He is deep in conversation with a phone pressed against the side of his head. I wince. We’ve all done it but unless you’ve been living on Mars the dangers are known and very real. In August 2016 Tracey Houghton, her sons, Ethan, 13, and Josh, 11, and stepdaughter Aimee Goldsmith, 11, were killed when lorry driver Tomasz Kroker ploughed into their stationary car. Footage showed him using his mobile phone prior to the collision. He wasn’t talking; he was going through his music. He was jailed for 10 years. Had Kroker not ploughed into the car he’d be doing the same thing somewhere else. That is because most cases where a driver is convicted the law is applied retrospectively after a road traffic incident. We all want something done but proactive policing just isn’t going to happen. Here’s why. A Freedom of Information request to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency revealed that in September 2014 there were more than 45 million active driving licenses. At the end of 2014 Ofcom estimated there were more than 89 million mobile phone subscriptions. Government Home Office figures revealed that in March 2014 there were 4,356 traffic police officers in England and Wales. Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) operate with 600 traffic examiners on duty at any one time policing up to 285,000 lorry drivers. I won’t bother doing the maths. Considering the endemic use of mobile phones by all drivers actually getting caught in the act would be considered so unlucky even comedian Jimmy Carr might struggle to put it into context. The first phone to go with a ‘driving mode’ was the Nokia Lumia Black OS back in 2013. A reviewer said driving mode ‘sort of forces you to be safe…messages or calls are held on the phone without letting you know so that you can drive with full focus on what you’re doing’. But there is always a ‘but’. Despite it being ‘great for road safety’ the reviewer felt it was ‘not so good when you need to be called by your child’s school if they’ve fallen ill. It's clear why this option is here but whether anyone choses to enable it, and effectively cut themselves off from the world, is another matter’. That philosophy permeates through our industry and will most likely be the fate of the latest iPhone. Hauliers always argue they have done their bit by issuing verbal and written instruction to drivers about company policy and the same people often do not give the driver the boundaries in which to work. It is more important for the traffic office to contact the driver en route than it is for the traffic office to play its part in promoting road safety. While hands-free remains legal, unless it’s proven to have affected the driver involved in a road traffic incident, fitting hands-free technology in a truck isn’t mandatory. Tracey, Ethan, Josh and Aimee could have easily been your family as they could be mine. How would you feel if you lost your family because someone flouted the law? We are in danger of letting this tragic incident pass without anything being done to prevent a repeat. As professional lorry drivers we must lead the way. Demand you be given the tools to do the job properly. Insist hands-free technology is fitted to the truck you drive, and let them know you will not pick up the mobile phone while driving under any circumstance. |
AuthorAging proletariat with face, teeth and body to prove it. Archives
August 2021
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