BREXIT Road transport/WTD
Killer on the road?
Could no deal mean death at the wheel? We investigate the grim reality for our already fatigued drivers
In 2015, refugees desperate to cross from Calais to England as well as striking French ferry workers brought Dover and the surrounding Kent countryside to a standstill. Around 7,000 lorries, each queuing for up to 18 hours, sat bumper-to- bumper for 36 miles along the M20 motorway.
“Operation Stack” lasted just a few weeks, but cost the UK economy an estimated £250m. Compared to the long term chaos a no deal Brexit will bring, not just to Dover but to ports across the UK, the costs and disruption incurred during the summer of 2015 is but a drop in the ocean.
It is lorry drivers, many already exhausted from long hours and dangerous working conditions, who will face the impact of no deal head on.
The government’s no deal Yellowhammer planning dossier, leaked in August, warns of severe delays at the UK’s busiest ports, with flow reduced by 40 to 60 per cent of current levels within a single day.
Lorries could be queuing for up to two and a half days for three months, although the dossier warns “disruption could continue much longer”, resulting in food, medicine and fuel shortages.
Despite lorry drivers being at the frontline of coping with the disruption such a scenario will create, Unite, which represents over 50,000 lorry drivers, has never been contacted by the government about planning for a no deal Brexit. As well as sounding the alarm about the economic impact of no deal, the union is also warning it could result in exhausted lorry drivers, who pose a danger to other road users.
“The problems associated with a no deal Brexit will not just be confined to Kent, it will create delays throughout the entire lorry and logistics network in the UK,” believes Unite national officer for road transport Adrian Jones. Unite will totally oppose any relaxation in driving regulations. This would result in exhausted drivers, with potentially lethal consequences for road users.”
The prospect of the government relaxing or suspending the regulations on driving time for lorry drivers is very real. Boris Johnson and other government ministers – five of whom described British workers as “amongst the worst idlers in the world” in a book they co-authored – want to weaken workers’ rights and employment legislation post-Brexit. Many of these laws, such as driving regulations, are essential to keeping people safe.
22 uniteWORKS Autumn 2019
Currently HGV drivers are restricted to driving for nine hours a day and a total of 56 hours driving a week, although their actual working week can be far longer when other duties are taken into account. Unite research shows that 80 per cent of HGV drivers feel “very tired at work”, with 74 per cent saying long hours impact their physical health and 49 per cent their mental health.
A separate confidential Unite survey of over 4,000 HGV drivers, undertaken last year, found that 29 per cent of drivers had fallen asleep at the wheel over their driving careers. Many reported not remembering passing junctions or their head hitting the steering wheel. The latest available figures for UK road fatalities show that in 2017 there were 267 deaths involving HGVs, including 21 drivers.
It is clear that a relaxation of driving rules would not only further harm the health of lorry drivers, it would endanger public safety too. For these reasons, the union has requested an urgent meeting over no deal Brexit planning for lorry drivers with the transport secretary Grant Shapps and the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove.
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