Letters to Fleet News’ editor John Maslen.

Lane hogging: truckers are the worst offenders

SIR – The six photos from the A1 (Fleet News, October 21) clearly show the frustration that middle-lane hogging can cause other drivers.
However, in this and many other cases it is not causing significant tailbacks or hold-ups.
The biggest cause of wasted lane capacity on motorways is when relatively slow vehicles, travelling at 50mph, are legitimately overtaking slightly slower vehicles. This blocks anyone wanting to travel at more than 50mph in the outside lane, significantly slowing the outside lane while the inner two often remain relatively clear.
One solution already regularly used is undertaking. However, I suspect safety considerations would win the day if any attempt were made to legalise it. The box in your article on the highway code includes the instruction ‘Return to the left hand lane.......or if you are delaying traffic behind you’. This statement could be much clearer and more effective in solving the problem.
I assume it is intended to include even the situation when you are wanting to travel faster than the vehicle in front. Making it clearer that this is the intention and enforcing it would help significantly.
Introducing minimum lane speed limits applicable when you are delaying traffic behind you could significantly reinforce this. Introducing the minimum speed limits would be a major headline-grabbing move, which should help focus the public’s attention on the problem and the changes being implemented.

Jeremy Siddall
Siddall and Hilton, Halifax

SIR – I entirely sympathise with Government efforts to persuade drivers to display proper lane discipline on motorways.
But I can’t help feeling that in targeting car and van drivers, they are excluding another group of vehicles that make a significant contribution to motorway congestion, i.e. drivers of heavy commercial vehicles.
All too often we see one HGV attempting to pass another, with a speed differential of only one or two miles per hour. As a result, it can take up to three miles to complete the manoeuvre. The problem is compounded when the overtake involves multiple vehicles in either lane. These moving roadblocks force other vehicles to reduce speed and cause a considerable backing-up of traffic.
By all means target drivers of cars and light commercial vehicles, but don’t ignore the trucks.
Then again, a truly integrated transport policy would see a larger proportion of this long-distance heavy traffic moved to rail. Then we really might see less motorway congestion.

Andy Robson
Robins & Day Leasing, Coventry

ECOs: what’s the problem?

SIR – I read your article in which it was suggested that there were industry concerns over health and safety with employee car ownership schemes (Fleet NewsNet, October 14).
I do not believe there to be any different issues regarding health and safety with an ECO scheme than with the traditional company car.
In the traditional company car, the health and safety of the vehicle is managed by the fleet provider who ensures cars are serviced when required.
This same process would apply in to a ECO arrangement with the leasing company which offers the scheme managing the servicing of vehicles in accordance with manufacturer’s requirements.
We are finding an interest in ECO arrangements among employers who have opted in to a cash environment as it leaves the choice largely with the employee while not having tax difficulties of the traditional scheme.

Alastair Kendrick
Director PAYE/NI Solutions, Ernst & Young

Time to lose this blame culture

SIR – Regarding the ongoing debate about drink-driving. While we may have a social and moral responsibility to try to deter people from driving under the influence of drink, we are not responsible for the choices that these people eventually make. Adults are supposed to be able to make their own decisions.
I do not see how a couple trying to prevent their friend from driving and not succeeding, should suffer by having to be now blamed for someone else’s choices (Fleet News Europe, October 21). There is far too much blame being apportioned to involved parties who have no direct impact on the circumstances and far too much trying to make someone else accountable for what in the end is the actions of the one person – the person who caused the tragic crash.
He, and only he, is the responsible party in this sad sequence of events. Let’s lose the ‘blame culture’ as this will take us nowhere and will simply open the Pandora’s Box of blaming everyone else but oneself.

S MacNicol
By email

Huge diesel numbers are a worry

SIR – Your item ‘New survey quashes fears over diesel RVs’ (Fleet NewsNet October 14) worried me.
I have no problem with Manheim Auctions’ report which broadly said that diesel residuals were holding up despite the fact that, in round terms, they account for 20% of today’s market.
That’s fine. I’m sure the market can accommodate this level of diesel penetration without a radical effect on prices.
My concern is more for the longer-term future of diesel residuals. A glance at last month’s registration figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders will show why.
In September, 42% of all fleet registrations were diesel. Some models were substantially higher with, for example, 62% of all Vauxhall Vectras being diesel and with the Ford Mondeo topping the league at 72%.
Nearly three-quarters of all fleet Mondeos registered last month were diesel. That’s simply staggering.
The evidence from the SMMT is borne out by our own members, many of whom are reporting diesel penetration levels in new orders of well above 50%, in some cases above 70%.
The reason why so many drivers are choosing diesel may be obvious but it is, in fact, irrelevant.
The important point with so many diesels now being registered is what will happen to residual values?
Will the market be sufficiently strong to cope with the coming influx?
In volume terms, I’d say yes. In price terms, that’s a different answer.

Robin Mackonochie
Head of Communications, British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association