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On the lunchtime news on the 22nd April the BBC featured a story regarding the price of diesel to hauliers.
Unfortunately the report included a lorry driver having no regard to the hazard of diesel spills to motorcyclists.
As the driver worked at the diesel tanks the film showed fuel spilling
out of the tank and onto the ground.The news item also showed how easy it is for drivers to forget to replace the cap as there was no chain or a non retractable key when the cap was removed from the tank. The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) has been campaigning for several years for diesel tanks to be designed so that diesel cannot spill out of tanks. Recently MAG has worked with the KillSpills campaign on this issue. In 2004 KillSpills organised a report and a petition to government culminating in September with a demo ride to number Ten Downing Street to highlight the danger of diesel spills.
MAG in turn has produced thousands of Diesel Spill stickers which have
been placed on pumps and trucks throughout the UK to remind drivers of the dangers of diesel spills. Sadly this has met with extreme reluctance from the supermarket chains and fuel companies who apparently see no reason to promote this important safety message.When inevitably diesel is spilt on the road there are issues surrounding the removal of this deadly hazard:
When serious diesel spills occur, it is necessary to immediately remove polluted road surface and resurface the road.
Many potholes or damaged road surface areas are the result of lesser
diesel spills which are not removed but ignored or at best covered with sand.Diesel dissolves the bitumen which binds the chippings together in the
road surface, leaving loose chippings which soon get removed exposing bare slippery tar beneath, its own surface softened by the diesel fuel.There are products available on the market for removing diesel spills
safely from road surfaces but the Highways Agency appears reluctant to use them, instead preferring the continued use of sand and stone chippings, which in turn create a further hazard.LOVE IS GIVING SOMEONE THE ABILITY TO DESTROY YOU, THEN TRUSTING THEM NOT TO.
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, But rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, Vodka in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming…….WOO HOO, what a ride!
Why can’t the tanks have a longer neck, with a floating ball inside a graduated tank that seals off the diesel, or the neck has a return slot which would intercept the diesel before it reached the top of the filler neck?
Be seen and be Safe!
They would just fill up to the top of longer neck then……unless there was an overflow system that fed slowly into an overflow tank. The sensor on main tank could be set at a level that prevented the lorry from starting…like a cutoff if tank too full, and lorry would only then start when excess fuel drains some off into overflow tank and level falls below sensor……
Of course this could all be solved if some lorry drivers where somehow made to understand just how dangerous they are making the surfaces for other road users…..ooh look there goes a flying pig….LOVE IS GIVING SOMEONE THE ABILITY TO DESTROY YOU, THEN TRUSTING THEM NOT TO.
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, But rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, Vodka in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming…….WOO HOO, what a ride!
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