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No reason for exclusion
Page 75
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I disagree with your editorial published in Commercial Motor dated November 21, 1969, in which it is stated -No sane person will quarrel with the automatic exclusion from h.g.v. driving of men with one eye, with a history of epilepsy or with badly deformed or missing limbs", for the following reasons:
1. An epileptic can suffer one attack in 20 years or one attack every 20 minutes—it is all a matter of degree but in the vast majority of cases this disease can be kept in control by drugs. Legislation has been or is about to be passed to enable epileptics in suitable cases to hold a driving licence which means, I presume, that such a person will be entitled to drive any class of vehicle during the currency of the licence, including an h.g.v. and when the licence expires any vehicle that is not an h.g.v. li.e. a car, a farm tractor or a mobile crane). This makes nonsense of the BMA ruling on epileptics not being fit to drive h .g .v .s 2. When serving in the Far East with the RAF in the 1939-45 war one of the motor transport fitters lost his right eye but still drove all types of MT vehicle including troop carriers. This youth aged 18 years was an ex. Wordie and Co (Glasgow) apprentice. You will, I think, agree that, if he had been unfit to drive, the Medical Board would have taken measures to prevent him driving. This makes nonsense of the BMA ruling, too.
3. I know two men both minus a left arm who drive (or drove—I've not seen them for a while) h.g.v.s. One operated a fleet of eight or nine Armstrong-Saurers and ERFs. He frequently drove lorries. The other, an owner-driver, worked on Liverpool-London night trunk work with an ERF rigid eight-wheeler.
I have often been a passenger in vehicles driven by the people in paragraphs 2 and 3 and would swear on the Bible that they were, in my opinion, better and more considerate drivers than some who have passed the h.g.v. test—and this includes one graduate from Motec.
I have been driving for 20 years with a clean licence—not exceptional by any means, but I do think that I can tell a safe driver from an unsafe driver.
It would be fairer all round if the MoT applied the new rules for the h.g.v. licence, medical check and extended driving test, etc., to all new applicants for a driving licence for any class of vehicle and to people who had been convicted of offences such as dangerous