2 Fill in the gaps with words from Exercise 1. Pay attention to the grammatical context.

1. The Convention defines the rights and obligations of carriers in any contract for the international … of goods by road.

2. Drivers are being encouraged to save … .

3. The Green Card is the most easily recognizable proof of … for production to the authorities after an accident.

4. Discounts are available for our regular … .

5. New traffic regulations aimed at reducing … on the roads.

6. In all countries … is charged on vehicles for the use of the transport infrastructure.

7. … from freight transport have declined since 1990.

8. Traffic is responsible for the greater part of noise … .

9. Technical improvement of vehicles will reduce their … .

10. Car … means to inspect or test the condition of car systems and service or replace parts and fluids

3 Read the text and complete the chart.

4 Do Exercise 3. Retell the text. Unit 16 Environmental impact of road freight transport

The impact of freight transport on local, regional and global environments is large and rising. Road freight is particularly damaging by comparison with rail and inland waterway. Lorries with a weight of more than 16 tones produce large quantities of carbon dioxide. Over a distance of 1000 km at an assumed average speed of 80 kph trucks of this size release 400 kg of CO₂. CO₂ and NO_x (oxides of nitrogen) emissions rise dramatically with higher speeds emphasizing the importance of speed control for lorries. Traffic is also responsible for the greater part of noise pollution. At a speed of 50kph a lorry produces as much noise as 23 cars or in other words 4.2% of one lorry is responsible for the same noise level as one passenger car. Noise levels are higher because of overloading of lorries.

The UK government and the EU with the support of the UK government has entered into a number of commitments that give formal articulation to sustainable development objectives. They include the Framework Convention on the Atmosphere (Climate Treaty) covering greenhouse gases, the Convention on the Conservation of Biological Diversity and the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution. All of these are influenced by concepts of environmental capacity which indicate levels of pollution that should not be exceeded. Clearly any breaches of threshold values that compromise the ability of environmental systems to repair themselves or that trip dramatic changes in temperature or climate will damage the prospects of future generations.

There are five ways to reduce the environmental damage caused by freight transport. These are:

1. Technical improvement of the vehicles to reduce energy consumption and emissions.

2. Optimum use of transport logistics resulting in more efficient capacity utilization.

3. A shift from environmentally damaging modes of transport (road) to better performers (rail, shipping and inland waterway). The rail system can easily remove 50% of the long distance motorway based road freight. This has important implications for reducing CO₂, reducing the demand for motorway widening and new road construction and improving the economics of the rail system. At least four waterway systems have the capacity to remove over 500,000 tones and 50,000 lorries from the road system. The potential for reducing lorry activity by modest transfers to environmentally better modes of transport is large in scale and modest in investment requirements.

4. Changes in the spatial organization of transport, production and markets resulting in reduced distances at the same production volume.

5. Reduction of production and consumption levels so that fewer goods need to be transported.