Harold Grantham.
Harold Grantham of Quadring, loving husband of Lorraine and a much loved Dad and Grandad, passed away peacefully at Pilgrim Hospital on 29th July 2000, aged 60 years.

Call for urgent action on hard shoulders.
A Somerset recovery operator is calling for urgent action on motorway safety following a near miss which he and two colleagues survived. "I am so angry that those in charge appear to have no consideration for the safety of motorists or recovery operators," says Peter Cabble of Foundry Garage.

His comments follow a very close shave on the M5 at the Avonmouth Bridge where four running lanes were in operation and no hard shoulder. Cabble was travelling south on the motorway in his Iveco slideback whilst a colleague and his wife were travelling behind in a Ford Galaxy returning from a Bristol repair shop.

The Galaxy developed a gearbox fault and was forced to pull right up to the armco at the bridge, although still in the running lane. Cabble realised the Galaxy was moving over and pulled across just in front of them.

"I knew the best thing was to lift the Galaxy directly onto the truck to get away from danger as soon as possible," adds Cabble. He estimates that he was less than two minutes in loading the vehicle and the slideback was almost fully returned when he saw a Daf truck heading towards him in the nearside lane. With no hard shoulder and no escape he feared the worst. Miraculously he and his colleague escaped with a lacerated leg and despite the fact that his colleague's wife was in the front of the Galaxy on the slideback which was pushed some way along the bridge, she escaped without injury.

"I feel sorry for the truck driver who had nowhere to go," says Cabble. "The vehicle pushed my truck into me and ended up half way up the slideback after it had pushed it along the road." With a huge drop into the river beside the motorway, Cabble realises he had a very lucky escape and is concerned that such arrangements with no hard shoulder are allowed by the highway authorities. "When I saw the truck only twenty yards away, I thought it was over and out."

In spite of concerns such as those raised from this incident, the Highways Agency is considering extending motorway capacity by removing hard shoulders or significantly reducing their width on certain sections of motorway. A spokesman for the Highways Agency told Professional Recovery: "The removal of current hard shoulder facilities and replacing them with an extra running lane is an option that is being looked at.

"However, I must point out that another hard shoulder would be constructed, so another emergency lane would be provided, though not built to the same depth as the current hard shoulders." Little comfort indeed for those who put their lives on the line every day to rescue stranded motorists.

Smart cars crash alert.
A new Automatic Crash Notification system has been developed in the US that alerts emergency or breakdown services in the event of a crash. The system triggers an alert to a call centre when an airbag deploys, or an emergency call button is pressed on vehicles fitted with the system.

A reported 200,000 plus vehicles across the USA are fitted with some form of Mayday or Automatic Crash Notification system. These include the GM OnStar system. It is projected that by 2004, some 11 million vehicles in the USA will be fitted with one of these units.

ACN systems are designed to help save lives by providing emergency services with immediate notification that a crash has occurred, the exact location of the crash, information about the vehicle and a wireless voice link with the victims.

In the US a national initiative is encouraging the development of ACN and similar systems. Work is underway to integrate automobile technologies and information from commercial call centres with public safety, emergency medical services, law enforcement and transportation agencies.

Ford is believed to be on the point of launching its own system, which is expected to be called Mobile.com Vauxhall intends to launch a UK version of GM OnStar, but a spokesman for Vauxhall admitted that the launch has been delayed several times and that it is still some way off.

Direct access to operators on way.
A major new technological development could lead the way towards new services where car drivers have direct access to recovery and breakdown companies from a handheld computer, or even smart mobile phone.

Palm Inc which produces Palm Pilot and other handhelds has announced a new service in partnership with US recovery company 1-800 Tow Truck. The Traveller SOS service is a software programme bundled with certain Palm products that enables direct contact into the control centre and messaging forwarding services.

Palm Inc vice president Byron Connell says: "Traveller SOS offers Palm handheld customers a versatile and easy-to-use programme for emergencies on the road.

"Applications like this are a great example of how Palm handhelds can be used to create powerful solutions for our customers." With the development of WAP phones and other technologies this type of service could create opportunities for new pay-on-use recovery and breakdown products to be offered to consumers.

New courses on offer.
All Terrain Training of Inverurie, Scotland, are offering a number of new training courses. These include Forklift, Slinger and Banksman, Lorry Loader, Wheel Crane and Quadbike. For more information call 01467 625511

ATTŐs base in Middlewich, Cheshire, offers training in vehicle recovery. Courses include Night Recovery, HSE and IVR Recommended Recovery, First Aid, IVR Heavy Vehicle Recovery. Phone 01606 737494.

Tardis takes over RAM .
Tardis Telecommunications has confirmed its takeover of RAM Mobile Data.

Tardis is a provider of wireless data communication, transport telemetrics and remote monitoring systems equipment. "This is an exciting time for RAM and this decision represents an important landmark in the company's development. It gives us the freedom to act quickly in a fast moving market," says Richard Pullin, RAM managing director.

A spokesman for Tardis says: "The acquisition represents an unrivalled opportunity to become European leader in providing integrated wireless data and telemetric solutions.

Casualties on road are down.
Road casualties in Britain fell by some two per cent last year. The figures, released by the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, show that during 1999 there were 320,310 road casualties.

3,423 people were killed (a rise of two on the previous year), 39,122 were seriously injured (a drop of four per cent on the previous year) and 277,765 were slightly injured (two per cent lower than for 1998). Child casualties were down by three per cent, and the number of serious or fatal injuries involving children was down six per cent on 1998, at 5,699 - of these 3,457 were pedestrians.

Although the number of serious injuries to cyclists fell by five per cent, the number of fatal injuries rose by over nine per cent. The number of motorcyclists killed rose by ten per cent.

D&G in Trailer first.
D&G Cars is the very first owner of Roger Dyson's new travelling axle recovery trailer. The new trailer, the first of its kind in Europe, incorporates a revolutionary design that enables the bogie to travel up and down the bed to enable loading and unloading by a single operator, as well as an amazingly low approach angle of six degrees.

"We made the decision to buy the new trailer because, what with our petrol tanker work and bus work we were getting called more and more to recover vehicles with rear axle problems," says D&G's Mick Jennings. "We used to load buses onto our old low loader but had to use several pieces of wood to get the loading angle correct without grounding out the bus and damaging it." Jennings reveals that since purchasing the trailer they have had calls from operators all over the country to do one-off jobs for them. However, the trailer's first outing was recovering a loaded fuel tanker with a spun rear axle for a local operator, a job which, thanks to the new trailer's specifications, took only fifteen minutes.

"Since buying the trailer we have sent it back to Roger Dyson for some minor modifications our staff have asked for," continues Jennings, "one of which was a full set of working lights down the centre of the loading bed. Roger has done this but warned us not to leave lights on as an aeroplane might try and land on it!"

A new twin-axle 32 tonne design load version of the trailer will soon be available.