Safe Speed Forums

My husband recently finished working for Amey Mouchel who are contracted by the Highways Agency to cover certain parts of the Motorway system throughout the UK.

You may have noticed that instead of police regularly patrolling the motorways now we have HATO's (Highway Agency Traffic Officers). These HATO's patrol 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

One of the jobs employees of Amey Mouchel have to do is patrol their section of motorway 7 days a week. This means that at weekends 2 men are paid time and a half on a Saturday for 3 hours and double time on a Sunday for 3 hours (although the run can be done in 2 hours) to ride around in a truck to see if the HATO's have put any large bits of debris safely at the side of the hard shoulder (which could be picked up by the litter pickers during the week) and to check for any barrier damage, which the HATO's also do, 24 hours a day and why Amey Mouchel and like contractors have people paid to be on a call out system on the ISU (Incident Support Unit) which the HATO's would call on spotting barrier damage or an accident where a vehicle had collided with a barrier.

To the motorist, who is already paying through the nose for anything and everything to do with motoring, this just means he is paying even more for the same job to be done twice.

In the summer months the guys who do what they call 'the weekend ride around' will go out at 0600 / 0630 and do their patrol and that is it until the next day, when they will likely go out again at the same time which means that is that until they officially start work on Monday at 0745. Where is the point, especially when the motorway is already being patrolled 24 hours a day? Why should we be paying for doubling up of patrols? There is not just the wages to take into account, but the fuel for the vehicles, the additional pollution and the additional wear and tear on the patrol vehicle, that one way or another we are paying for.

Just another way we in Britain are being ripped off!

Lyn Ladds