Large trucks are a serious safety threat, and should be discouraged from using public roads, says the car review website dogandlemon.com.
Editor Clive Matthew-Wilson, who is an outspoken road safety campaigner, says he’s “horrified” at the large number of accidents involving trucks and cars, including a recent incident where a log fell from a truck and pinned a woman in her car.
“Trucks make up about 2.5% of the vehicle fleet but cause 18% of all road deaths. Even though trucking accidents have dropped in recent years, trucks are still a major hazard.”
“If we were talking about boy racers being involved in 18% of the road toll, the police would be calling for boy racers to be pushed off public roads. Yet when trucks are involved in about 18% of road fatalities, the police generally respond by telling car drivers to be more careful. This is effectively taking the trucking industry’s position, instead of stating the obvious, which is that trucks are a major road safety hazard, regardless of who caused the crash.”
“Claims that trucks are necessary to move most goods around the country are mostly a lie. The government’s own figures show that transporting goods by rail is over five times more efficient than transporting goods by truck.”*
“I’m not attacking truck drivers, who are generally very skilled and very courteous to other motorists. I’m attacking the system that effectively pits cars and trucks against each other. Often the truck driver is not at fault, but when a car and a truck collide, size wins. Logging trucks in particular are a serious menace to other motorists.”
Matthew-Wilson believes that the trucking industry is driving much of the government’s transport strategy.
The trucking lobby – the Road Transport Forum – was a major donor to political parties at the last election.
“The government’s policies start to make sense when you remember that former Road Transport Forum chief executive, Tony Friedlander, used to be a National Party cabinet minister, and the current head, Ken Shirley, used to be an Act party MP.”
* In 2000, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) calculated that transporting goods by road used 3.1 million units of energy to move one ton of goods one kilometre. By comparison, moving the same goods by rail used only 0.61 million units of energy, even allowing for the energy used when the trucks picked up the goods at the railway station.
