{"id":9976,"date":"2017-06-29T16:50:08","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T16:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=9976"},"modified":"2017-06-29T16:50:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T16:50:08","slug":"pothole-repairs-top-van-drivers-manifesto-for-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/9976","title":{"rendered":"Pothole repairs top van drivers’ manifesto for change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mercedes-Benz<\/p>\n

In the wake of the recent general election, van drivers have put together a manifesto of their top 10 priorities for change for the new government.<\/p>\n

The research was carried out by Mercedes-Benz Vans UK and involved questioning 2,000 van drivers and operators. Unsurprisingly, potholes were at the top of the list. A staggering two-thirds of van operators say they’ve had to pay for repairs resulting from pothole damage over the last 12 months. That’s just not good enough.<\/p>\n

Second on the list is better town parking. Again, that’s unlikely to surprise any hard-pressed delivery driver whose been forced to endure the wrath of other drivers and traffic wardens by stopping illegally to make a delivery.<\/p>\n

Here’s the top 10 list of van drivers’ priorities for the new government. There are a few surprises — check out numbers 6 & 7!<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Pothole repair: 60%<\/li>\n
  2. Better parking provision in town: 43%<\/li>\n
  3. Investment in bypasses to ease bottlenecks: 34%<\/li>\n
  4. Widening motorways: 24%<\/li>\n
  5. Increased traffic police presence: 19%<\/li>\n
  6. Fewer speed cameras: 17%<\/li>\n
  7. More speed cameras: 16%<\/li>\n
  8. Better training for professional drivers: 14%<\/li>\n
  9. Abandoning Smart Motorway schemes: 6%<\/li>\n
  10. More toll roads: 4%<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Congestion is one of the big themes running through the list. And it’s clear why. According to Mercedes-Benz, fleet managers estimate that 14% of their drivers’ time is lost as a result of congestion. That’s equivalent to about 1 hour 10 minutes out of every eight hours.<\/p>\n

    Surprisingly — given that congestion affects everyone — 61% of those questioned said that they or their employer had lost business as a direct result of congestion.\u00a0This figure peaks at 82% in Greater London and 66% in the West Midlands, while 75% of delivery divers say they have lost business as a result of congestion.<\/p>\n

    Experiments with smart motorways don’t seem to have convinced van drivers, although this may be due to lack of understanding — only 28% of those questioned said they definitely understood how a smart motorway works.<\/p>\n

    It’s clear the government still has a lot to do to meet the needs of commercial road users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Pothole damage is van drivers’ number one complaint for the new government, with two-thirds saying they’ve had to pay to repair pothole damage over the last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[1644],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9976"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9979,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9976\/revisions\/9979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}