Archive, Industry News

Targeting trucks

Is the right lane ban a job half done? Ken Wilke offers his take on rules that target only trucks and leave cars to do as they please.

 

I have a response from the director general of Queensland’s Transport and Main Roads in relation to that ‘trucks keep right’ requirement on the M1. The correspondence ends by telling me I can write all I want about the issue from now on but my efforts will not be rewarded with any reply.

Okay, my issue is not so much that trucks are not to be in the right lane. My issue is a combination of two points at least. Firstly, if society was to take a mature attitude to driver discipline, there would be no trucks in the right lane anyway; that lane would be occupied by light vehicles travelling at the maximum speed allowed. Again, the current half-baked effort to free up travel on the M1 simply targets trucks.

When will someone in bureaucracy take a lesson from professional drivers instead of using half-baked assumptions to base their regulations? These bureaucrats are too stupid to consider advertising a benchmark speed in an effort to improve traffic flow and reduce the incidence of traffic friction-induced accidents.

Readers may remember in an article some issues past that I mentioned the demise of the B-double route that is Stanmore Road near Brisbane. The recent high water caused considerable damage to the Alan Wilke Bridge which connects Stanmore Rd to Beaudesert-Beenleigh Rd. Alan passed away in the same week that his namesake bridge was reopened to traffic. That intersection is another bureaucratic balls up, and bureaucracy is determined to persist with the stupidity.

The sign posting at the intersection requires that left turning traffic into Stanmore Rd gives way to right turning traffic. The issue is that while I am held at the intersection in my 45ft taut-liner, I am obscuring the visibility of both through traffic coming from my rear, which is a fair curve to the left for such approaching traffic; and also hiding from the view of right turning traffic the presence on through traffic approaching from my rear.

Just get rid of the give way signs directing left turning traffic to give way. Revert to the ‘normal’ of ‘right waits for left’. Not too bloody difficult. Or is it that the concern is being raised by a dumb bloody truck driver?

Scenic Rim Council in south east Queensland is obviously one public entity that has little respect for the small transport operator and the narrow profit margins historically available to such transport operations. The transport operator has a 20 hectare rural property adjacent to town. The business has been storing four trucks on the block overnight and during weekends. The local council in its greed for funds has deemed the site to be a transport depot and ramped up the rates by 84 percent.

More public greed coupled with small to nil service provision.

Previous ArticleNext Article
Send this to a friend