Met Police back to school

The Metropolitan Police is taking its HGV education and awareness programme into school to teach sevento 11-year-olds about the dangers posed by vehicles.

“We’re teaching pupils about keeping their distance and eye contact with drivers, and changing their behaviour. If you can see the driver, then he can see you, and that’s what we are pushing,” said Met Police commercial vehicle unit inspector Rik Wenham.

More than 2,000 children in London have been involved in the scheme, which started earlier this year. A larger awareness campaign is planned for the next academic year.

Swedish coupling manufacturer VBG debuted its latest smartcoupling system for drawbar applications at RTX, with the system moving from analogue to digital.

Key account manager Phil Pratt explained: “We have a digital system that runs off its own CANbus, which transfers data to a liaison centre, which then sends it to the driver and the operator’s fleet management system.

“On the actual smart

Construction material supplier Forterra is in the process of taking delivery of 40 new triaxle semitrailers from SDC Trailers, with one brought to RTX to show visitors the manufacturer’s technical prowess.

These 13.6m-long trailers are not the usual runof-the-mill specification; designed for brick and block goods, they have tracks for a roll-on crane and, more importantly, are fitted with Tridec’s doubleaxle rear-steer system.

While the front axle is fixed, the middle and rear both steer to aid on-site manoeuvrability, said SDC Group president Paul Bratton. “The accessibility of this is fantastic. It will coupling, we have exchanged the air actuator with a piston system, and extended the deflector plate right the way across, so that it covers both the mechanism, which we’ve lowered, and the air actuator.

“We have changed the indicator pin, and it pushes out any dirt that has accumulated, and we have fitted a little indicator lamp that goes red and green as the coupling goes up and down.”