« Today in Road Transport, 10th April 2007 | Main | Today in Road Transport, 11th April 2007 »

Drivers' hours rules, Working Time Directive and speed limits

There was a very disturbing letter in The Daily Telegraph last Saturday. The author wrote:" If a driver wants to comply with the maximum working hours, he will be forced to break the speed limit to complete a day's work. If he complies with all the speed limits, he will inevitable exceed his maximum driving hours.
Even the most carefully planned day's work can thrown into chaos through no fault of the driver, for such reasons as traffic jams or delays in loading. The only solution is to have two full-time drivers per lorry, at considerable extra cost to us the consumers. Another stealth tax?"
This was from an Anthony Marlow of Little Bookham, Surrey.
How can someone say that if a driver complies with speed limits, he will inevitably exceed his maximum driving hours? While I know that there has been an increasing amount of legislation about working time, that is no excuse for breaking the law. Mr Marlow should be ashamed of himself for trying to excuse running illegally. Surely the great majority of operators realise this.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.roadtransport.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5739

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on April 10, 2007 12:35 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Today in Road Transport, 10th April 2007.

The next post in this blog is Today in Road Transport, 11th April 2007.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.