FTA objects to ridiculous Gloucestershire truck ban

1 June 2006

The Freight Transport Association says Gloucestershire County Council’s planned truck ban, part of its ‘Lorry Management Strategy’ could mean empty shelves in local shops.   It says GCC aims to restrict weight, height, length and access and apply night-time curfews in a range of areas, starting with part of the Cotswolds.   The curfew will apply to trucks on all roads in the area except the A40 and A417.   ‘These proposals are utterly ridiculous,’ said Stephen Kelly, for the FTA.   He says they will increase traffic on already over-used routes.  

RoadSafe believes that there is a disproportionate number of crashes on Britain’s roads involve goods vehicles.  There is a need for commercial vehicle manufacturers and operators to work together to solve this problem. 

With as many as 1,000 road deaths and 13,000 serious injuries a year involving people who were at work at the time. While many of these crashes occur in cars, the delivery vehicle if far from excluded.
In an average year there are:

• Over 280,000 casualties on Britain’s roads with over 3200 killed.
• Over 17000 injury accidents involving LGVs in which over 500 die
• and 13000 HGV injury accidents in which over 300 die.

On the trunk network between  2001-2003:

• There were 64,896 accidents, of these 20,097 involved at least one commercial vehicle.
• Where an HGV was involved they accounted for 34% of fatal accidents and 21% of serious accidents.
• This amounted to180 fatalities and 1,182 seriously injured.
• Commercial vehicle occupants accounted for only one in five of all casualties.

Views please: info@roadsafe.com