Dear Editor:

I have just returned from a business trip to Canada where I picked up a copy of your Truck News, November 2007 Volume 27, Issue 11. I found some of the articles very interesting although the article by Carroll McCormick about speed limiters not very plausible.

We have been using speed limiters set at 56 mph (90 km/h) in the UK since approximately 1996, the idea having come from a civil servant behind a desk. These speed limiters have caused a lot of problems and maybe accidents on our roads.

Carroll McCormick wrote about carrying out a test with his car. I cannot understand how this could be a correct analysis of the effect of using speed limiters. The only true way of analyzing this system is for more vehicles around him to be set at the exact same speed in order to see the congestion this can cause.

Up until five years ago when I semi-retired, my wife and I ran a very successful international trucking company and, prior to speed limiters being enforced, we personally restricted our drivers to a maximum speed limit of 60 mph which I controlled by checking their tachograph charts. This is in my opinion the way forward because the speed limiters in Europe have caused more resentment between car drivers and truck drivers than you can imagine.

I would also like to point out that you will always have professional and respectable trucking operators who will comply with the law but you will also always have the cowboys of the business who will find a way around anything you put in their way. Trust me, that is what is happening here in Europe.

Nigel V.Fry

Canterbury

United Kingdom