Dave Stride, a self-employed driver from Southampton, wishes that the
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French gendarmerie would stop targeting UK trucks for special attention and imposing "random tolls" for bogus offences..:
What a superb catch all law! Stop a lorry and collect £16'
We continental lorry drivers are well aware that the French gendarmes carry out regular; stringent checks on lorries. I regularly drive in France and expect on average to be stopped once every month or so. Nothing wrong with that, you might say; any law abiding haulier should welcome random checks on the legality of lorries.
The trouble is that more and more drivers are suggesting that the checks are not so random, and that it is British lorries that are being picked on. More worrying are the stories being told of drivers being spot fined for spurious offences. Until now I have always taken these stories with a pinch of salt. Maybe the driver wasn't revealing the whole story of his brush with the French authorities, or perhaps he had offended the gendarmerie in some way. Well, now it has happened to me and I can tell you that the whole experience leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. I was travelling south towards Bordeaux on the N] 0—a well known road for police checks. I was following a French lorry when we were both stopped in a roadside check. The French lorry was quickly waved on while I was subjected to a detailed and lengthy check. All tachograph charts, documents, permits and paperworkfor the load were scrutinised in detail. After a considerable length of time it was clear that the gendarme could find nothing wrong, So that was OK then.
Oh no it wasn't! Apparently by looking along the road as I approached the gendarme was able to tell that I was driving too close to the lorry in Front and, after consulting with his colleague, announced that I had to pay a fine al-150 French Francs (about £16).
As a matter of policy it is best not to argue with a policeman, especially when he is holding your driving licence and vehicle registration document in his hands. When all is said and done £16 is not a vast amount, so paying the fine seemed a prudent thing to do. The fact is that it is an offence in France to drive a lorry over 7.5 tonnes closer than 50 metres to another vehicle. A minimum of 50 metres is a ludicrously long distance to keep between vehicles so, on a busy road, every driver is committing an offence most of the time. What a superb catch-all law! Just stop any lorry at any time and collect £16. Make that British lorries and it helps to reduce the French Budget deficit. But what a shortsighted policy. What does this sort of action do for the Entente Cordiale? Surely, for the sake of public relations and co-operation, the French should stick to fining drivers who commit real offences and stop what amounts to random tolls on foreign lorries.