Get heavier on overloading
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• Magistrates are too soft on hauliers who overload their lorries, says Roads and Traffic Minister Peter Bottomley.
They should appreciate the dangers of overloaded vehicles and impose more realistic fines, he says in the latest issue of The Magistrate — the journal of the 26,000-member Magistrates Association.
Bottomley admits he is on "thin ice" and says it is not for ministers to advise magistrates what penalties to impose, even though the average fine for overloading is under 2200. This is against a maximum laid down by Parliament of 22,000.
Hauliers can make profits from overloading lorries, and it is difficult to justify the leniency, he says. Efforts by the Government to clamp down, including a 20% increase in lor ry weighing and electronic sensors, will not deter operators from taking a chance of "making a little easy extra profit" if, when taken to court, they "got off' with a trivial fine.
Lorries loaded above design weight are less able to stop in an emergency, says Bottomley, and, even when not serious from a safety point of view, overloading costs rate and tax payers 250 million to pay for wear and tear.
Overloading is unfair to most law-abiding operators who accept profit constraints that result from abiding by weight, speed and drivers' hours limits, he adds.
A spokesman for the Magistrates Association says it is quite normal for ministers or other prominent figures to write articles in The Magistrate, but that the executive has no power to advise it on what fines to set. Its own guidelines suggest 2200 fines for drivers and 2400 for hauliers convicted of overloading, with harsher penalties for serious cases.