We would all benefit from ‘dreaded MoT’

We have been told that traffic pollution in Town is above acceptable EU levels.

An MoT would address emissions from older vehicles.

Speed limits were set many years ago when vehicles used to have less than effective brakes featuring drum braking systems. I’m sure older readers can remember ‘standing on the brakes’ to stop in an emergency.

An MoT tests the efficiency of all braking systems and, apart from some very old collectors’ cars, I would suspect that they are 100% more effective now (stopping distances have been reduced drastically) and would be kept performing to the required standard by the regular tests.

As an aside, Ronez use a piece of kit called a Symret Meter which tests the dynamic performance of the braking systems on their quarry equipment (dumpers and loading shovels) which could be incorporated into a local MoT.

We might even see a reduction in the number of clearly unroadworthy cars and commercial vehicles circulating on our roads.

I know some will say that Dave is feathering his own nest with the call for MoTs but we would all benefit from the reduction in unsafe, polluting vehicles on our roads.

Dave also makes the point that at no time has E&I deemed it necessary to consult directly with the various interested parties, and here again I am at odds to understand why they could not have adopted the approach which HSE took when looking to introduce detailed regulation of the construction industry. On this occasion a working group of all the interested parties was set up to include the builders’ federation and unions, which worked together to draw up the framework of an Approved Code of Practice.

When it was subsequently introduced everyone was aware of its content and all worked together to improve standards of safety on construction sites.

Last Friday’s Guernsey Press also disclosed that the signs necessary for the new 25mph zones had already been purchased and that E&I played no part in that purchase, but unless the whole system has changed since I retired, Signs and Lines are part of a trading board who work on behalf on E&I and I am sure that they would not purchase enough signs to last four years on a replacement basis unless someone in E&I had told them to or indeed given them a purchase order to do so.

Mr Brehaut would certainly not have raised that PO personally, but do politicians not now take responsibility for their staff?

I see in Saturday’s Guernsey Press that the police have also now told E&I that they could not enforce increased numbers of 25mph zones, and clearly they struggle with those that exist at present, but from one who slowed to 25mph past Vistas at Vazon only to see the peloton of cyclists in front of me continuing at 35mph, one does have to wonder if there is one law for the motorists and another for E&I’s preferred mode of transport, the bicycle (and as a regular cyclist I’m not having a pop at most of the sensible riders on the island).

So to come back to the premise of my first letter, if we are to have additional 25mph zones let’s see some local evidence to support it, not some nebulous report from Rospa which quotes national statistics.

As my old teacher used to say, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

RICHARD BROWN.

P.S. In conversation at L’Ancresse the other day ‘with someone in the know’, I was told that the concrete from the wall which E&I are hell-bent on demolishing is the wrong type and cannot be used for the groynes as previously proposed – something to do with the amount of steel the Germans put into it (now there’s a surprise).

How much will that put on the overall cost of the project, replacing the broken concrete with stone armour?