Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Our neighbours, the Transport Research Laboratory, last week highlighted the dangers of using hand-held mobile phones while driving. We all know it’s going on and escalating as a problem but at least we have some solid research to back it up.

In 2006, TRL found that 2.6 per cent of car drivers used hand-held mobile phones. Two years on, the figure has crept up to 2.8 per cent. The information was gathered from observing 14,000 drivers at 30 separate sites around London. These are, I would suggest very conservative figures and only take into account car drivers, not van or commercial vehicle or even taxi drivers.

When tougher penalties of £60 fines and three penalty points were introduced in 2007 for breaking the law, the figures actually dropped to 1.4 per cent but have since doubled. Meanwhile hands-free mobile usage has quadrupled from 1.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent.

According to TRL, drivers using mobile phones while driving are four times more likely to have an accident. Reaction times are slower and drivers will be less aware of what’s going on around them.

The fact is that drivers are these days more likely to break the law by driving while talking on a hand-held mobile phone than being over the limit through drink-driving. And yet in both instances, reaction times are likely to be impaired and the potential consequences just as fatal.

Government needs to be far tougher on the transgressors. The penalties need to be higher and there needs to be greater enforcement. And organisations need to be much firmer about hand-held mobile phone usage. It is only a matter of time before we learn about yet another fatality resulting in punishment for the driver and the company.

Usage of a hand-held mobile phone while driving on company business should be banned and clearly stated as being not allowed under company fleet policy.

The focus at this time of year is naturally on drink-driving but the flagrant breach of mobile phone laws should not be ignored either. Both represent a danger to the law-breaker and other road users, be they in vehicles or not.

On that serious note, I wish readers of this blog a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Electric vehicles are very much flavour of the month with Government. Chancellor Alistair Darling in this week’s Pre-Budget Report has announced that from April next year he is giving company car drivers who opt for the electric option a five-year break from benefit-in-kind.

Coming hot on the heels of the incentive in April of up to £5000 off a new electric car from 2011/12, this is good news for environmentally-minded company car drivers, who still currently have to pay 9% BIK on their electric cars.

Even van drivers are being given a five-year holiday for going electric plus a 100 per cent writing down allowance for the first year.

In some ways, I see electric van sales possibly becoming more popular initially pro-rata than electric car sales as local delivery drivers opt for the cheaper, greener electric van route.

Earlier in the year, RAC Foundation research indicated a fifth of the UK’s 34 million drivers would consider or were planning to buy an electric car within the next five years.

However, lacking a proper re-charging network infrastructure, the Government acknowledged that electric vehicles would not be available as mass-market alternatives until 2017 at the earliest.

The PBR announcements would indicate Government wants to jump-start the switchover.

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles will definitely depend on a viable public re-charging point infrastructure but Government may be hoping the incentives to individuals and companies will hasten its creation at a practical level.

We’ve had the Energy Technologies Institute announce a number of UK major cities are to gain charging points for electric and hybrid fuelled vehicles under an £11m development plan, which will see a Joined-Cities Plan initially set up charging points in nine UK cities including 25,000 in London by 2015. And then, this November, we heard about the Plugged-In Places initiative which will fund charging points in streets, car parks, commercial, retail and leisure facilities to the tune of £30m in three to six UK regions as a precursor to a nationwide roll-out.

Whether joined up, plugged in or plain fully-charged, the switch to electric transportation is slowly gaining momentum, a bit like when you depress the accelerator on an electric vehicle.
        

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

It seems as if the Government is trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. Converting hard shoulders for peak time running appears to be a favoured cheap solution to our motorway traffic congestion problems rather than actual lane widening.

The second stretch of motorway hard shoulder running was opened this week.

Cars being driven the seven miles between junctions four and five of the M6 near Birmingham are now permitted to use the hard shoulder as a traffic lane during peak periods.

In March last year, the then Transport Minister Ruth Kelly officially opened a 1.7-mile stretch of hard shoulder between the southbound M606 and the eastbound M62 towards Leeds for use by cars and taxis carrying two or more people. This followed the construction of new lay-bys for broken down vehicles, with the new high occupancy lane estimated to save up to seven minutes on journey times.

Next week sees the first so-called ‘through-junction running’ scheme, where drivers using the hard shoulder will be able to drive across the exit and entry lanes on the M42. Now that could be hazardous unless motorists are particularly prudent.

However, results from the pilot scheme reveal a 22% increase in journey times and a lower number of accidents, down from an average of 5.1 per month to just 1.8 per month. Controlled speed running, as has been practiced on the M25 for several years now, seems to be working.

The current Transport Minister, Chris Mole, claims the Government is on track to create 340 miles of hard shoulder running by 2015. The cost to develop will eat up half of the £6bn national roads programme budget!

It will be interesting to see if ultimately it is money well spent or whether it is forestalling the inevitable – more road construction.

I hope for the country’s sake that it works but I can’t help feeling it’s all a bit of a botch job, a bit like the good old days when you filled rust holes with Isopon. It was only ever a temporary solution.

We have yet to receive from Government a cohesive plan to solve our transport problems, namely an integrated transport solution.

How long do we have to wait? Meanwhile, it appears to be papering over the cracks.