Woo hoo!

The roads will be safer, not because speeding vehicles are slowing but because at last we are going to have the existing policies on dangerous driving implemented.

• Tail-gating is out
• Undertaking
• Driving and talking on your mobile

Undertaking is a big driving no-no yet if you spent 15 minutes observing a busy A-road or motorway you will see several incidences of it. It’s good to see tail gating being tackled, there will be a few white van drivers that won’t like that. Tough. Use the van for what it was manufactured for – transporting goods, it’s time to stop people using vans as weapons and to intimidate other drivers.

I was in the car once with Sarah and a van hared right up behind us braked sharply and then hung on our tail for several miles. We were in the slow lane and Sarah found the whole experience rather scary. The van revved and moved forward and we were reluctant to break the speed limit (and where could we go? there were cars all around us) the van driver could see this but it didn’t stop them from being so close to us that I thought he was trying to breed our vehicles!

There are people that go to fast, but there are far more idiots on the road and I applaud this effort to get people driving as they should – safely and considerately.

Will the enforcement of the laws change your driving patterns?

Kev

Monday was a busy day for us, and not in the usual way.

Sarah was running the office as usual, and I was out on the road. I was delivering some important legal documents which meant going to W1.

All was fine going into London, the roads were normal and the traffic flowing.

Coming out was a different story entirely, the traffic was horrific. It took me 2.5 hours to travel 200 yards!

I thought for some reason the Pope returning to the Vatican would mean that he flew out of Heathrow, to be honest I have no idea which airport he was intending to go to, he had brought London to a standstill on a work day! I wonder if Boris Johnson charged him for using the Popemobile in the congestion zone? I wonder how he felt about the new Popemobile? Did he see the old one?

Anyway, back to the traffic…. Now it’s ok for me to sit in the traffic, I’m a courier company owner. I like to keep hands on and I like to visit our clients. This lead me round to thinking, when is it ok not to use a courier service but have your own staff sitting in traffic all day? Is it ever ok for your staff to do this?

We have clients for ad hoc work, their idea of ad hoc is when they hear of traffic on the radio, they call us to come and sit in it for them. It’s cheaper than losing a member of their team for several hours and having to pay overtime.

Traffic can be a blessing in the ad hoc scenario

Now there are some drivers who when in traffic like to do a number of things that could get them in trouble…

• Reading a newspaper
• Eating
• Drinking
• Texting
• Calling people

Of course there are those who don’t even wait for traffic before doing one of the above.

(c) Daily Mail

Yes, that is a van driver eating cereal at the wheel. Now they may be sitting in traffic but should they be breaking the law?

You can see more here on the Daily Mail website.

In conclusion, sitting in traffic is something couriers do. Traffic is an essential part of business life Eating cereal at the wheel is something our drivers would never do and we don’t advise you trying it either!

Thankfully Papal visits are only once every 28 years, if they held up London in this manner every day, I’d have to move to another city

Kevin

At the end of October this year (2010) the law changes regarding retirement, there will be no longer be a compulsory retirement age.

Whilst many see this as a good move and think it will remove some age discrimination, there are others that think it is a bad thing, in particular when it comes to having older drivers, on the road and in charge of big vehicles. Now the well reasoned counter argument to this is – drivers over 65 will be tested annually for their driver CPC, and annually as part of their HGV. But when ever has well reasoned, logical argument ever changed anyone’s mind?

As much as an employer can do to monitor and employees health, we need to take into consideration that things do go wrong much quicker with your health as you get older. What a younger person can survive, an older person may not. Add at least a 3 tonne vehicle into the equation… well, you don’t have to be Einstein to work out the the complex mess we are potentially in.

Where does this leave us transport companies? Between a rock and a hard place as usual. We are damned if we ask someone to retire, and damned if we keep them on and they die at the wheel (and wipe a few other people out at the same time). Our public liability insurers will be rubbing their hands with glee at the the thought of all these increased premiums!

So what does it mean to members of the public? (who don’t really pay attention to how items get into the shop, only that they do get there, and often).

It means their clothes and food go up. Increased premiums, well the money has to come from somewhere… and not every transport company makes huge profits like Stobarts.

At the moment we don’t have any drivers near retirement age, and we don’t ask for age when we recruit – we employ on ability, experience and attitude (see how we recruit a driver). It’s possible that we now may require a medical upon a job offer to ensure the driver is safe enough to be on the road. We are not allowed to discriminate against older drivers, not that we would want to, so we now have to ask for medicals from every driver that we recruit to show we are fair, and fair in our processes.

Another option would be to move the driver off of the road and into the office where their years of road experience will work in their favour. Sadly the office roles are often not as well paid as the driving roles. I can see though with all the additional red tape and paperwork this generates that additional member of office staff will be required!

I guess we will have to wait and see the effect of having older lorry drivers on the road, and transport companies will have to be very careful and enforce many checks to ensure they won’t be sued for corporate manslaughter.

In the mean time, tell me what you think – would you like to be driving a 18 tonne lorry as person in your 70′s?

Kevin