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16 August 2010

Trade associations seek privatisation of VOSA safety testing. If they succeed vehicle safety will worsen.

In a joint letter dated 4 August the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, the Freight Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association wrote to DfT Secretary of State, Philip Hammond.

The letter, headed "Dear Philip", asks DfT to abandon its Approved Testing Facility (ATF) policy. Under this, staff from VOSA carry out the annual safety checks on lorries, buses and coaches at private sector sites.

We are favour of abandoning this as well, as the ATF policy is a disaster (as we predicted it would be).

We part company with the trade associations though, when they urge “Dear Philip” either to privatise the annual safety check for lorries and let a private sector equivalent of VOSA carry out the work; or have the checks be carried out by “approved individuals” (this is their favoured option). By approved individuals they mean their employees should conduct the safety checks.

In their letter they say:

It may be that fears for road safety would be expressed by some, were the industry to be entrusted with its own testing: however, we would turn that argument on its head. GB-registered trucks are generally maintained to a high standards and annual test rates, both before and after rectification are at a record low. In terms of road safety outcomes, investigations by VOSA of many hundreds of accidents each year involving trucks indicated that crashes are rarely caused by the mechanical condition of the truck.

Let’s turn their argument the right way up. The only reason that “GB-registered trucks are generally maintained to a high standards” is that VOSA checks them once a year; that is the companies know an independent body has the power to take their vehicles off the road if they fail the safety check; this knowledge keeps most of the companies on the straight and narrow.

Of course if an approved individual,that is one of their employees, safety- checks the vehicles then by definition that person is not independent and of course is more susceptible to pressure to pass a vehicle than a civil servant working in VOSA.

Furthermore there are thousands of haulage companies. Presumably each will have an approved person. Therefore VOSA would have to check thousands of people’s performances. Given the cuts in public expenditure there is no way that the agency will be given resources to do this. In reality the Trade Associations’ proposal means little checking up on the testing carried out by approved persons. They will be effectively unregulated.

Lastly what about buses and coaches? DfT in the guise of VOSA also safety- checks them once a year. If the Trade Associations get their way will the bus/coach companies be forced to have approved individuals as well (whether they want them or not) or will a greatly shrunken (uneconomic) VOSA be expected to look after the buses and coaches? So the trade associations’ polices impact on other industries as well.

We will be writing to the trade associations to rebut their proposals, making sure that “Dear Phillip” is copied in.

Their proposals are dangerous and will decrease vehicle safety. We will oppose them.

 


 

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