Crackdown at Crick
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• A check on international hauliers using the MI was undertaken by the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Constabular this week.
The vehicle check, centred on the Crick weighbridge at Junction 18 of the Ml, netted 111 vehicles and led to 16 prosecutions that evening at Daventry Magistrates Court.
Fines totalling £2,075 were levied against a number of international drivers and the police were awarded costs totalling £375.
The worst offence discovered in the check involved an MAN drawbar unit from West Germany. The brakes on the front axle of the trailer were not working and the handbrake cable on the trailer had worn through.
A Spanish driver was fined and his vehicle was impounded for 24 hours for driving on ten consecutive days without a rest day. There were only ten day's tachographs in the vehicle's cab so it is possible that the driver had completed an even longer stint without a rest.
Customs and Excise staff at the traffic check confiscated several plastic carrier bags full of duty free goods which had been brought into the country illegally.
"This is a great place for Customs to operate," says Geoff Stanley, the Department of Transport traffic examiner who organised the check: "Here we are 150 miles inland, and the last thing the driver expects is a check from a uniformed Customs officer."
Working with the police, customs and Department of Transport staff were personnel from the weights and measures section of the Department of Trade and Industry who weighed every vehicle stopped in the check. This included a British lveco Turbo Daily van which was found to be 26% overweight.
The recent crackdown at Crick follows a combined police and Department of Transport operation to check foreign goods' vehicles using the Midlands motorway network on 14 July, which led to 14 of the 44 vehicles checked being put off the road for drivers hours ofences, overloading or mechanical defects.
In a separate traffic check at the Blackwall Tunnel on the same day, the police, Department of Transport and Trading Standards Officers stopped 107 vehicles, of which eight were overweight. A further two were detained for vehicle excise offences. Seven drivers were stopped for '0' licence offences, and four for tachograph offences.