Tragic accident kills recovery driver and sons.
A recovery operator and two of his young sons were killed in a tragic night-time accident on the M25 in Essex at the end of July.

Barry Riseley (31), who worked for Janes and Son of Bedford, had taken his sons Daniel (7) and Matthew (6) along for the ride on what should have been a routine job, delivering a Ford Orion to Gravesend on the back of his 7.5-tonne MAN 8.163 slide-bed. But in one of the saddest incidents in the UK recovery industry in recent years it appears that Barry's truck ran into the back of a Mercedes articulated lorry which had stopped in a traffic queue caused by roadworks on the approach to the M11 junction.

Barry and his eldest son were killed instantly. Matthew died in hospital. Barry had taken the boys with him to give his wife, who is pregnant, a rest. The accident happened at around 11.30pm on Saturday 28 July and closed the clockwise M25 for nearly six hours. The driver of the Mercedes artic was treated for shock.

Barry had worked for Janes for three years. "He was the best driver we had," Steve Janes told Professional Recovery. "We had loads of commendations from customers, he always did that bit extra to help. Barry was just 100 per cent breakdown and recovery mad. There were two things in his life - being behind the wheel of his lorry, which he kept spotless, and being with his kids.

"I wouldn't wish anybody to go through this," he added. "If anything comes out of it I hope it makes the public more aware of the dangers we face on the road"

The police are trying to trace the driver of a red family saloon who they believe could be a vital witness. It is understood that he stopped at the scene, but left before the emergency services arrived. The police phone number for anyone able to offer information about the accident is 0208 345 1713.

An Essex police spokesman said that the family would like to thank friends, local residents and the police for their support after the accident.
The funerals took place in early August, and Steve Janes paid tribute to those who organised what he described as a brilliant turn-out of recovery trucks - John Huckle at Buckdale Recovery in Bedford, Frank McAllister, and Janes controller Tony Petman. The cortege was given a police escort.

AA takes Halfords garages.
Centrica, owners of the AA, are acquiring Halfords garages, the largest independent chain of car repair, service and maintenance centres in the UK.

The purchase of the 129 Halfords car repair centres from Boots for £5.75million is Centrica's first major acquisition on behalf of the AA and is expected to be completed on 31 August. Around 1,200 staff will transfer to Centrica.

Centrica says that the deal will allow the AA to build on its core strategy of providing essential motoring services for its members and other motorists, and will further strengthen its customer relationships by broadening its range of services to cover everyday car maintenance and repair. Most of the garages are located on the same sites as Halfords retail stores which will remain part of Boots.

Roger Wood, Centrica's executive director responsible for AA Road Services, says: "We are extremely pleased to acquire Halfords garages. Halfords has established a strong position in this market and the AA will build on that reputation under its own brand so as to offer high quality service to members and motorists generally."

The acquisition will allow the AA to introduce a range of other benefits for members and customers, including vehicle servicing, on-site vehicle inspections and the services that Halfords currently provides such as free brake and tyre checks."

David Thompson, deputy chief executive of Boots, adds: "The AA's expertise in motoring services will provide new opportunities to grow the garage business. We are looking forward to working closely with the AA, ensuring a smooth transfer of the garage business as a prelude to a good relationship for the future."

All but one of the 129 garages share sites with Halfords retail stores, of which there are 405 across the country. The odd garage is a stand-alone operation at Southampton. The Halfords garage operation will continue to service Daewoo cars. Some Halfords retail sites - which are not part of the AA deal - act as Daewoo sales points.

As well as ownership of the AA, Centrica is the name behind British Gas, Scottish Gas, Goldfish and One.Tel in the UK. In North America Centrica trades as Direct Energy in Canada and as Energy America in the USA. It has owned the AA since September 1999.

Disability rights and recovery services.
The government is expected to publish a consultation paper shortly on the application of aspects of the Disability Discrimination Act to breakdown recovery services. This is in response to recommendations made on a range of topics earlier this year by the Disability Rights Task Force.

However there appears to be no intention to insist that there should be disabled access to recovery vehicles used to carry motorists whose cars cannot be repaired by the roadside.

Government sources instead point to the need to provide information in a way which people with disabilities can gain access to it. The likelihood is that for most recovery operators there could be a requirement to ensure that staff were made more aware of how to handle the needs of people with disabilities. We will provide an update when the consultation paper is published.

NVQ first for RAC patrol.
RAC patrol Andrew Woodfine is the first person to be awarded a Level 3 NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) in Roadside Assistance and Recovery. All 1,300 RAC patrols are now working towards gaining the NVQ.

The new qualification was developed by the Motor Industry Training Council in conjunction with RAC and is awarded by the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI). It is available to anyone involved in roadside assistance work and is at present based purely on work assessment, although in the future it is likely to have an exam component too.

The NVQ measures competence in a number of areas crucial to safe and efficient work at the roadside. These include assessing and securing the roadside situation, identifying and agreeing the customer's needs, carrying out roadside diagnostics and repairs, removing and transporting vehicles from the roadside, minimising risks to health and safety and maintaining positive working relationships.

The RAC patrols use computer-based open learning techniques which allow them to work for their NVQs from home. Evidence of practical skills is gathered by assessors using digital cameras and voice recorders. "Our patrols have always been proud of their technical skills and abilities," says RAC technical director David Bizley, "not just to fix vehicles at the roadside, but to provide the best possible service to our customers. The NVQ allows us to formally recognise these abilities." To find out more the first point of contact is the IMI at www.motor.org.uk or by phone on 01992 511521.

RAC wins Arma contract.
RAC has signed a contract with new contract hire and leasing company Arma to provide its customers with a comprehensive breakdown and accident management service.

Liam Donnelly, managing director of Arma says: "Our strategy is to provide fleets with a complete vehicle management service. This includes implementation of a company's car policy and supplying vehicles inclusive of fully-comprehensive insurance, accident management and fuel within the monthly rental."

Arma runs a fleet of over 15,000 vehicles across Benelux and the UK.

3 Arrows rebrands as Centrus
Avis Europe subsidiary 3 Arrows, which claims market leadership in the provision of non-fault accident assistance, has adopted a new name and image: Centrus.

Centrus offers replacement vehicles, repair funding and uninsured loss recovery services to victims of non-fault motor accidents.

It offers competitive commissions and prompt service, and can provide a funding facility for storage and recovery charges in third-party write-off cases.

Says Centrus managing director Jon Ralph: "The new corporate identity allows us to present a modern, quality image to the market. It heralds a new era of co-operation with the insurance industry.www.centrusonline.co.uk
0500 333330

Go easy on the caffeine.
Green Flag is warning drivers that high-caffeine drinks and other temporary measures cannot be relied upon to keep them from feeling weary at the wheel. Up to one-in-five road accidents are caused by tiredness, possibly killing more people than alcohol-related incidents, according to research by Loughborough University. Green Flag's own report on safe driving found that 60 per cent of motorists surveyed admitted to driving when tired and that alarmingly, one in seven drivers actually admitted to having fallen asleep while driving. Nigel Charlesworth at Green Flag says: "Although drinking strong coffee or energy drinks may help to alleviate fatigue in the short term, we advise drivers that the only real solution to tiredness is sleep. Taking proper breaks during long journeys is also essential, as monotonous stretches of road can lead to drowsiness."

And Mary Williams, chief executive of road safety organisation Brake, adds: "Driver tiredness is a serious and hidden killer. Caffeine drinks are only part of a series of measures drivers should take to avoid drowsiness. Most importantly, people should never drive if feeling tired, after all, no journey is more important than a life."

SPECIAL PROFILE: LARO - Looking after London.
Stewart Brown talks to Gary Bravo, chairman of the London Association of Recovery Operators. Here's something not many people know. Over one quarter of all vehicle breakdowns in Britain occur in London. From which you can conclude either that Londoners don't maintain their cars very well or that there are simply an awful lot of cars in the capital. It also has the highest concentration of recovery operators in the country, and its own particular operational challenges. And to help address these challenges London has its own recovery association - LARO, London Area Recovery Operators. The man at the helm in 2001 is Gary Bravo, who runs SOS Motorcycle Recovery. "There has been a lot in the papers lately about London being the most expensive city in Europe," says Gary. "LARO members can back that up. Premises costs, business rates and wages are higher here than elsewhere in the country. This immediately puts pressure on businesses. In terms of recovery operators in London, just think about the traffic. The average speed of traffic on London is about 7mph, and that is decreasing every year.

"This means that a) it can take ridiculous amounts of time to get to jobs relatively near to you, and b) London operators cover relatively tiny areas." LARO was founded in 1993 by a group of London operators. They were already members of other associations, but they felt these were not answering the needs of their members, with particular reference to the problems associated with operating within London.

In 1997 LARO became a limited company, with member's liability limited by guarantee. There are no shareholders, and each of LARO's 43 full members has an equal say in directing the association. While the membership numbers may be small, Gary points out that if you put it in terms of recovery vehicles, LARO represents about 900 vehicles.

"One benefit of our size is that we don't have regions," he says. "All our members meet with the committee and the chairman at least every two months at our general meetings. LARO members are very close to where it all happens - their guidance and influence is taken on board by the committee throughout the year." If a small and active association sounds like a good idea and you think you'd like to join there's just one drawback. If you're reading this in Aberdeen or Aberystwyth you won't meet one of the basic LARO requirements: the majority of your work has to be within the M25. But if you do most of your work in Greater London LARO would be delighted to hear from you. Gary explains LARO's membership procedure: "Once an application has been completed and the application fee paid the company becomes a provisional member. It then has to pass an inspection of its premises, paperwork and internal procedures, trucks and insurance.

"If it passes it then becomes a full member, entitled to vote at meetings. Applicants can only be refused on the grounds that they are not part of the recovery industry in London, or if they fail the inspection. "LARO is not a closed shop," Gary stresses, "anyone and everyone meeting the criteria can join." However to remain in LARO members are re-inspected annually, and must pass the inspection. The high costs of land and staff in London make LARO and its members acutely aware of rates. "A few years ago you could make an acceptable living from recovery," Gary reasons. "Nowadays it's much more difficult, and if you plot the increases in costs against the increases in club rates, you will see that the two don't tally. Increased competition in the motoring association market has lead to clubs cutting membership fees and offering more services for the money. The people bearing the brunt of this are the operators.

"The clubs must remember though that if they push things too far operators will simply go out of business, as is actually happening now, and the clubs will not be able to provide the services they advertise. It's a situation where clubs and operators depend on each other to a certain extent - operators offer clubs priority service, clubs should offer operators rates that turn a profit, not a loss, for the operator." However LARO accepts that not all operators' financial problems can be blamed on the clubs. "A very large factor is the increase in restrictions on working hours, and other employment legislation," he points out. "It is getting more and more difficult for our drivers to earn a living wage for working legal hours. This makes it difficult for the companies as they have to increase their staff to cover the same amount of work, and also increase drivers' wages so they can afford to live." Most London jobs are within the free mileage limits of the clubs, which is an added financial burden. This is why LARO is campaigning for an end to free mileage for jobs in London, and also it offers the LARO rate to clubs. This is a standard call-out with no mileage charged for roadsides. Recoveries are charged from pickup to drop times two - no base-to-base mileage.

"For operators it means that they are getting a fair callout, and a fair mileage if the job is a recovery," Gary argues. "For clubs it means that they can phone round and get the best ETA for the job, without incurring any additional charges if the garage happens to be further away - it will be the same rate paid for every operator as no base-to-base mileage is involved. The vast majority of the smaller clubs use the LARO rate and we are currently recommending it to a couple of the larger ones." The next potential burden for London recovery operators is congestion charging. As reported on our news pages in this issue, purpose-built recovery vehicles are to be offered a substantial concession under the £5-a-day congestion charging proposals, but other vehicles such as service vans will be charged the standard rate. "As far as recovery vehicles having to pay to enter the central London area goes, LARO is completely against this," says Gary. "Recovery operators keep the roads clear of delays and congestion - its ludicrous to try to charge us." With its insistence that members meet certain minimum standards to be part of LARO, it will come as no surprise that it has strong views on training. "Anything which increases the professionalism and safety of the recovery industry is to be welcomed," says Gary. "Training is an integral part of creating common standards and spreading best practises. However, training itself must meet the standards we expect and courses must be based on a common content. The IVR has become instrumental by allowing affiliated trainers to provide certificated courses throughout the country, based on IVR set content, course notes and exams. The recent development of NVQ qualifications is also a big step for us.

"IVR training can be quite expensive for small companies, both in terms of paying for the course and getting cover while that technician is away. If companies could provide induction training themselves, and then allow the technician to attend classes or be assessed on a part-time basis it would spread the cost and mean that cover wouldn't be required.

"I think we also need training for control room staff and managers, so that a career structure and career progression can be established. At the moment, unless your family is in recovery, you don't leave school wanting to be part of the recovery industry. People don't really realise we're here as a profession. We need to change that, through nationally recognised qualifications that are more widely available, and through promoting the industry itself as a structured, professional industry with high standards."

SOFTWARE - MTS launches Turbo Phone
Turbo Dispatch has been around since 1995 and in widespread use since 1996-97 - to the point that it is now estimated that around 80 per cent of all recovery jobs in the UK are dispatched over it.

Motor Trade Software is always looking for ways to improve Turbo Dispatch and are always trying to take it forward. Andy Lambert at MTS says that most people are already aware of the system's reliability, with around 99.5 per cent of all jobs arriving at the radio modem successfully. Perhaps more importantly, the ones that don't arrive tell the sender, and this allows them to try again. The technology used to do this is called Mobitex, which was designed purely for data transmission and is increasingly becoming the preferred solution worldwide for wireless data/internet applications.

Now of course there are alternative methods of communication, and one of them is the standard GSM telephone. However, there are good technical reasons why this will never replace Mobitex. So MTS has, instead, set out to complement it.

The first thing needed was for Transcomm (formally RAM Data) to link their Mobitex network into the GSM phone network. This has now been done, using the BT Cellnet system. Next trials were set in place, and they are now drawing to a close. As result MTS is now able to announce that the following facilities will be made available to all Windows Garage Manager users shortly:
1. When dispatching a job to a vehicle fitted with one of MTS Turbo Dispatch Mobile Data Terminals you will have the option to 'page' the driver's mobile phone. This will primarily be used when you know the driver is away from his vehicle and needs to be alerted.
2. If you do not have a Mobile Data Terminal you can dispatch the job details to the driver's mobile phone. Of course due to the limited capacity of GSM phone, it will not have as much information as a proper Turbo Dispatch message.
3. Progress information or "thank you for using the service" messages can be sent to the customer or club member's phone, as a text message.

The cost of each message is the standard 10p that is normally charged for the GSM Short Message Service. When you send the job details or message to the Mobitex network, it will confirm it has delivered the message to the GSM gateway. Of course after that you are in the hands of the GSM network - however, MTS's test show that in most cases the message is delivered in around five seconds. In fact, says Andy Lambert, in all of their testing only three messages were never delivered.

So what do you have to do to use this facility? Firstly you will need to contact Laurie Bright at Transcomm (020 8990 9090). He will organise the paperwork you will need to activate this feature.

Once you are live you will need to enter the SMS gateway's Mobidem Access Number (MAN), into the Windows Garage Manager. This is located under: Files, Set-up, General. Now add the GSM phones you wish to use to the Turbo Dispatch directory (see image), making sure to use the international code and selecting SMS under type. Now use the standard F10 to dispatch a job or F12 to send a text message. Of course 'cut and paste' will work, if you want to place something from the job sheet in the message, and the spell-checker works too.

Those who are interested in wireless technology may like to know that despite the publicity associated with the deployment of GPRS by the cellular telephone operators (the so-called 2.5G technology for wireless data) and the longer-term promise of third generation cellular networks (3G). The actual number of Mobitex users worldwide has increased five-fold in the last 18 months. Mobitex has been successfully used for mission-critical data transmissions in the UK since 1991. And, with reference to last year's auction by the government, Andy Lambert points out that it did not cost £6billion just for the licence, and suggests that it will still be here long after the other network's hype has faded. Green Flag introduces mobile servicing. The latest service from Green Flag is mobile servicing, repairs and pre-MOT checks using a fleet of comprehensively-equipped vehicles.

"Basically Green Flag mobile servicing brings the garage to you, whether your at home, in the office, or even playing a round of golf," says Tony Dunlop, Green Flag's director of motoring assistance.

Green Flag claims that low overheads will make them competitive on price, and its servicing starts at £49.99.