A truer picture is needed of HGV Law infringement
Page 16
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE STORY 'Almost half of HGVs stopped were "committing offences' (CM 17 December 2009) denigrates the transport industry quite unreasonably. One might also read an anti-truck bias into it by Devon and Cornwall police in the way they presented their findings What is never made clear in reports of this kind, from the police or other enforcement agencies, is the obvious point that. at a roadside checkpoint, only those vehicles which, in any one of a number of ways, appear possibly to be comitting an offence are flagged down.
Clean, well-maintained and relatively newly-registered trucks, that are clearly not overloaded and keeping to the speed limit are let go by. You report that the operators of 161 vehicles out of the 368 stopped by the police were charged with offences and that a police spokesman was -taken aback that nearly every other vehicle was committing an offence': What we really need to know, before passing judgment on truck operators as a breed, is how many HGVs passed the police checkpoint(s) in total. That would give a much truer picture of the scale of law infringement.
Alan Bunting Via email