Italian truck war hots up
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• Italian truckers' demonstrations against tough new government measures dealing with speeding, overloading and tachograph offences have claimed their first fatality.
The measures, involving fines of up to 22,300 for violating speed limits or driving HGVs on Sundays and public holidays, were introduced in September after widespread concern at the rising death toll in accidents involving trucks.
Some truck drivers have responded to the government's action by staging three-abreast crawls on motorways, causing major disruption to the rest of the traffic. There have also been pickets, road blocks at motorway access roads, scuffles, tyre-slashings and stone-throwing. The latest action included a six-day nationwide strike called by transport groups.
A driver's mate on a strike-breaking truck was killed by a stone which was thrown from an overhead bridge, shattering the windscreen as the vehicle was travelling near Molfetta on the Bologna-Bari motorway last week.
Spokesmen for the transport groups supporting the strike have disclaimed responsibility for the death and blame extremists acting illegally.
Confetra, the Italian road haulage association which did not support the strike, lodged a protest with the government, claiming that working drivers were being intimidated, subjected to physical violence and stopped at roadblocks while police did little or nothing to protect them.
At the height of the strike it was estimated that the volume of commercial vehicles on the roads dropped from the normal 25% to 12.5% of total traffic as compared with the same period in 1985. A high proportion of the missing vehicles were TIRs.