§ Mr. Eadieasked the Minister of Transport how many accidents to articulated lorries took place in 1965, 1966 and to the nearest convenient date in 1967 through this type of vehicle jack-knifing.
§ Mr. SwinglerThis information is not available, but sample studies have shown that about 10 per cent. of injury accidents involving articulated vehicles were accompanied by jack-knifing prior to the accident. This does not, of course, mean that jack-knifing was necessarily a cause of the accident.
§ Mr. Eadieasked the Minister of Transport if she is aware of a safety device invented in this country and used abroad to prevent articulated lorries jackknifing; and if she will issue regulations for its use in this country.
§ Mr. SwinglerThe Department's engineers are fully conversant with the various methods and devices designed to eliminate jack-knifing of articulated vehicles and with the further research, study and experiment now being undertaken into this problem. It is being tackled in a number of ways, but there is no evidence as yet to justify regulations requiring any particular device to be fitted. Improvements have already been achieved by better distribution of braking effort between the axles of articulated vehicles.
It is important to realise that an incident in which jack-knifing occurs is not always caused by the vehicle itself, but may be the result of a collision.