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news
Cement lorry in London © Simon MacMichael.jpgTwo thirds of lorries stopped by police are driven illegally or lack basic safety features
Two thirds of lorries pulled over by police are being driven illegally or are not fit for the road, according to figures released by the Metropolitan Police.
The crackdown on dangerous HGVs without basic features began late last year, and now drivers of defective lorries face a £200 fine as part of a tightening up of road safety begun by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
Penalties can be given for misdemeanors including failing to have side-guards and convex mirrors to give a better view of blind spots.
According to The Times, “in the first two months of a police clampdown on the most dangerous construction vehicles, 622 out of the 821 lorries stopped by officers failed to comply with the existing safety rules. Only 32 trucks had mirrors and safety equipment, including bars to prevent cyclists being crushed beneath the wheels, as required by law.
“Just 24 per cent of vehicles complied with regulations covering maintenance, how loads are carried, insurance and how long drivers have been on the road. Officers fined 243 lorry drivers for operating without a licence or working long hours, or for driving with insecure loads, broken lights or running a truck that was in poor condition.”
Only 30 per cent of the almost 6,000 vehicles stopped in the 11 months from January were driven legally or free from defects.
Martin Key, campaigns manager for British Cycling, said: “This level of law-breaking is disturbing and shows that as a country we have to do a much better job of looking after each other on the roads.
“HGVs are involved in a disproportionate number of collisions with people on bikes and on foot, so we applaud the Met Police for running this targeted operation, which shows a clear and immediate need for greater levels of enforcement.”
Last year we reported how London Cycling Campaign (LCC) said local authorities and transport fleet operators should not install technology aimed at improving the safety of cyclists around London until a series of questions regarding how the systems operate in practice have been satisfied, amid fears that they could actually increase the risk to cyclists.
LCC says that while its Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling is making progress in getting London boroughs to sign up to use only highly trained drivers and vehicles with specific safety equipment, there are concerns about a rush of products coming to the market.
The LCC criticised the way in which such devices are marketed, such as Cycle Safety Shield, currently being trialled in Ealing, with the company hoping to install TFID tags on Barclays Cycle Hire bikes and which is touted as enabling drivers to “concentrate on driving and not be continuously checking for cyclists."
LCC said: “We are deeply sceptical this approach will reduce danger on London streets. The designers of many of these devices claim that if they can stop even one cyclist death a year it will be worth it. Our fear is that these systems actually increase risk by giving drivers and cyclists a false sense of security.
“We have seven burning questions about how these systems work in practice, and have told the TRL testing team of the potential pitfalls,” it adds. “Before any system is adopted for use by companies or governments then we must have answers to these questions:
- How many of the 1-2 million bikes in London need to fit a tag before a lorry driver can be sure he'll not put a cyclist in danger?
- What happens if drivers begin to rely on a system that only shows a minority of cyclists?
- Even if the system notifies a driver to the presence of one cyclist, how will they know about any other other bikes without tags in the immediate vicinity?
- If the alarm goes off at a three junctions in a row and is silent at the fourth, should a driver assume there are no bikes in the immediate vicinity?
- Is it a failsafe system? How will the lorry know if the battery in a bike’s tag has died?
- How will the cyclist know that the lorry’s system is turned on and working?
- Will cyclists with the device fitted assume that it's safe to go up the left side of any lorry?
- If drivers stop looking out for cyclists, will this have a detrimental effect on pedestrian safety? (as LCC points out, many more pedestrians than cyclists are killed by lorries most years in London).
The Metropolitan Police also revealed that in a major clampdown on illegal road use following a spate of cyclist deaths in the late autumn, one in three people fined was riding a bicycle.
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28 comments
target the companies that send those drivers out with defective trucks or expect them to work over their legal hours... strip their licenses to operate from them.
"Ever watched outback trucker (Yeh I'm sad), they get fined AU$125 per tie-down strap that is loose. No excuses allowable, no 'I'm being nice' today, just a fine.
Compare that with the UK ticking off talk from plod ...hard as."
standards aren't a lot higher over hear in Aus' read the bit below - 2 pedestrian deaths following a tanker rolling over and a company trucking most of the countries fuel is found to have a significant proportion of its vehicles with major defects
in my mind the issue with minor (or not so minor) defects on HGV's and the proportion found in London is that it says a lot about the company culture - a company that doesn't care about its trucks meeting the law , doesn't care about employees following the law or their welfare or the safety of the general public
"Heavy vehicle inspectors from VicRoads have been examining vehicles at the Cootes Transport depot in Spotswood over the weekend following last Tuesday's deadly crash in Sydney.
As a result the company has immediately been ordered to take 36 vehicles out of action due to major defects.
The inspection found 91 of the company's 110 vehicles had roadworthy defects.
Cootes is responsible for delivering fuel to BP, Shell and 7-Eleven stations."
from this article in the Herald Sun -
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/faulty-tanker-troubles-spell-petrol-sho...
edit oh and meeting legal requirements is a minimum standard not best practice
As Stumpy pointed out, it's almost impossible.
Firstly, what if the load is perishable, livestock or deadline urgent - most building deliveries are scheduled to fit in with others for example. You can't just leave a load of foodstuff parked up by the side of the road while the driver walks home, it'll be a health hazard within a day.
Secondly, it's not a case of "inconveniencing a few car drivers" - one lorry parked up in a city can bring 3 or 4 streets to a halt. Two dozen parked up will gridlock half a city in 20 minutes.
That's why they tend to do these sort of vehicle checks at motorways services where there's space to park it all up and arrange in advance for extra drivers & lorries to be there in support.
Realistically, in London, the only option is to let them go with a fine/warning and follow it up later. That's why there were so many cyclists pulled over and fined. It's just much easier and doesn't cause any traffic problems. I don't agree with it but it's unfortunately the view of the current powers that be.
There are easy solutions for that. One you've already pointed out:
And the other one is to do some real clamping down and check the vehicles before they start moving. In the company parking lots and depots. Unannounced crackdowns, real ones. Not this fluffy PR bullshit.
Yeah. Go for the low hanging fruits, so Police can pretend they're doing something.
Wonder how many unroadworthy cycles there are. Possible per capita just as many along with just as many dodgy cars and vans.
Ever watched outback trucker (Yeh I'm sad), they get fined AU$125 per tie-down strap that is loose. No excuses allowable, no 'I'm being nice' today, just a fine.
Compare that with the UK ticking off talk from plod ...hard as.
Probably true; but when a poorly maintained and ridden bike has an accident it's generally only the cyclist that suffers. When a vehicle weighing anywhere between 2 and 42 tons of poorly maintained and driven metal has an accident the driver stands a reasonable chance of surviving but not those they hit.
Stumpy's posts certainly explain something for me. I must see a lorry with near bald tyres twice a week these days. Tyres that on my car would be risky seem to be ok on tipper trucks in particular.
While all this was going on, (heavy vehicle checks) the whole of the media, tv and press, were transparently blaming the cyclists for not wearing high viz apparel and helmets. Strewth!!
On another note. Just seen BBC London news and the Met Insp in charge seems to think it was a massive success.
One of his justifications; more cyclists are wearing hemets and hi-viz. Amazing twisted logic.
If the campaign was a succes then surely the proof would be fewer cyclists feeling the need to wear helmets and hi-viz because the roads were actually safer.
Spot on 100%
Classic scaremongering, rather than face up to the obvious.
Oldridgeback, i could have expanded the comment i made in that all cops can stop a vehicle for minor infringements such as lights out just in case it confused people. What i meant was serious offences to get a vehicle off the road.
With your degree you are probably more highly qualified than most cops when it comes to defects but the training courses are just not available due to budgets and also they wont train a non motor patrol officer in PG9.
It's a pity more police aren't given that training - a lot of those badly defective vehicles tend to be uninsured and also are being driven by people with no licences and who are engaged in criminal activity and who may be under the influence of drink or drugs. I've seen a paper that shows links between repeated driving offences and criminal activity and drug use. And such people have scarily high crash rates.
I've also seen a paper revealing the crash rates for young males in the 17-24 age category that says 24% will have a crash of some sort. Seeing that sort of data does make you wonder why young males are allowed to drive at all.
If you banned males <25 from driving you would have to do so for females also. And then accident rates for 25-30 year olds would rise due to inexperience...
Completely off topic, but one of the daftest ever Euro regulations was enforcing equal insurance rates for men and women. Women having cheaper insurance (in most cases) was 100% statistically defensible...
Another vote that a vehicle found to be unroadworthy should be interrupted and impounded, and the owner given 30 days to effect repairs. It's simply unacceptable to have a 40-ton object on the roads that is not safe at any time.
To be honest the law change made no real difference because now generally insurance companies just changed the way they apply it, in a sense it is based purely on risk and since a male will be at a higher risk they will still generally get charged more.
It is no surprise this many lorries were caught with various issues, however it still won't stop cyclists ignoring the fact they should keep well clear of lorries and never ever go down the left side of one near junctions....rightly or wrongly there is only one looser in this scenario.
As I understand it, drivers below the age of 20 represent less than 2% of license holders ... and yet are responsible for about 25% of the deaths on UK roads.
I just don't understand why little or no action is taken to remedy such an appalling situation. Most other developed countries have vastly more restrictions for young and inexperienced drivers than we do in the UK. Sure, *some* of the issues are due to inexperience, which might still occur irrespective of the age of the driver (but even those can be mitigated by restrictions on passengers, etc) however most are probably simply due to the stupidity of youth. I'm really glad I didn't learn to drive until I was nearly 22 (I had a bike). You really wouldn't have wanted a 17-year-old 'me' on the roads.
The crash rates for people in the 25-30 year age group wouldn't increase to nearly the same levels. It isn't so much inexperience that leads to such a high crash rate for 17-24 year old males, as immaturity.
But I agree 100% with regard to your point on the Euro ruling regarding insurance rates for males and females.
I bet most of the cycling fines were them making up what they'd like to be "law".
Refuse to pay.
Just on a side note - you have to be qualified as A: a vehicle examiner to be authorised to identify defects and B: have to be whats commonly called PG9 trained to get a vehicle uplifted - daft i know but thats the type of red tape we have to deal with.
I'm a vehicle examiner and undertook a 2 week course to qualify but i'm not PG9 trained (only motor patrols and a few ARV drivers are in our force) and as such i cant automatically get a vehicle uplifted.
So if i see a dodgy vehicle i can stop it point out the defects and either report, arrest or ticket the driver but i then have to get a PG9 authorised cop, if they are available, to come along and serve the paperwork on the driver to get the vehicle uplifted.
I cant comment on the Met as they might do things differently but when you see a cop at the roadside talking to a driver it does not automatically mean they have the power to get a vehicle uplifted. Bureaucracy at its best.
Interesting bit of insight Stumpy as ever - it does sound like bureaucracy getting in the way of common sense. I've no training like yours but I'm an engineering graduate with a lot of experience of the road safety field and I see what I know to be unroadworthy vehicles on a daily basis. Most of those, with broken lights or flat tyres, can be quickly remedied. But I also see a lot of vehicle crabbing sideways down the road, probably due to defective tracking arising from a bump into a kerb in most instances. A few are obviously cut and shut jobs or have more serious chassis problems.
I'm curious though since I can spot them so easily why there aren't more trained traffic officers policing the roads getting these dangerous vehicles off the street, but I expect this has a lot to do with budgets?
Absolutely agree with OldRidgeback, if the lorry is stopped and is, quoting the article, "being driven illegally or are not fit for the road" then there should be 'no further movement'.
I.e. it's stopped right then and there! Driver walks home, the load and vehicle is stopped.
The vehicle can then be taken (by a police or police-appointed driver) to an impound lot at the owners cost. Then levy a further £1,000 per day the vehicle is there.
If remaining more than 10 days, start confiscation proceedings and then sell the vehicle on, proceeds to be used for road traffic enforcement, i.e. paying for more police to carry out this process.
This should sort out drivers' & owners' legal breaches very quickly indeed!
And the effect of this 'clampdown' is what?
That a large number of defective vehicles have been removed from the roads? No!
That a number of people driving without the correct permits or licences have been prosecuted and had their licences endorsed or removed? No!
They got £200 fines and a cheery wave from the police and told 'not to do it again otherwise we might get very cross'.
Another opportunity missed to rid our roads of the 75% of vehicles that are being operated illegally.
Having vehicles stacked at the side of the road might inconvenience a few car and taxi drivers, so what? If it's your load on the back of the vehicle why were you using an operator who was prepared to break the law in order to get your business?
These vehicles will act as a deterrence to other similarly minded drivers and operators and, rather than getting the same few vehicles stopped over and over again, the scheme will work through all the vehcles on the road.
The removed vehicles should be immediately impounded and the cost of removal and getting them back should be so high that they should never come back onto the roads.
And one final benefit, the revenue made from the scrap value of the vehicles, and possibly their loads, could be used to finance the system removing the burden from the tax-payers.
Until the police act accordingly and remove those lorries from the road and have them crushed, all talk about a 'crackdown', as you point out, is ineffective and nothing but a bullshit fluffy PR campaign.
I'm of the firm belief that until pedestrian, liveable cities and cycling campaigners get together and begin to shut down dangerous junctions causing massive disruption to Johnsons precious 'traffic flow', all London will continue to receive is more lip service and empty platitudes
^ This.
Off the road with them, right there and then - plus massive fines for the operators. I'm so sick of the ones who pose the biggest danger being let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.
Thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands injured. Every year. But hey, we must keep the goods rolling at a dumping price, right? This system is sick.
I appreciate what your saying but you've rather jumped the gun and assumed thats whats happened because after wading through the article it does not say anything that you have quoted. They might have been uplifted, they might have been taken to court. All it says is that of the 821 stopped 243 got £200 fines and you have made the rest up.
Probably true that I jumped the gun but hey, lets not fall out over the odd knee-jerk reaction
My main point is that most of these vehicles will be back on the road, with or without the defect repaired and I think most people agree that a proper 'clampdown' would put in place the resources to remove the problem at source.
No offence taken mate, likewise perhaps i was a bit harsh. In the end we all want the same thing and thats safe roads for all of us.
So if 1 in 3 people fined by the Met was a cyclist then 2 in 3 people fined were motor vehicle operators, which basically sounds about right.
The tagged bike system is limited as its own developers realised by the time the initial trial was completed last year. The Cycle Safety Shield system has moved on to a 2nd generation technology using a combination of cameras and electronic sensors to detect the presence of a bicycle or pedestrian or motor cyclist. If the Boris Bikes are being kitted out for the 1st generation system then someone somewhere has screwed up by using the cheaper, earlier technology which its own developers know to be flawed.
It is of concern that so many defective HGVs have been stopped. But it's not really much of a surprise to be honest. I expect the cops have been able to spot the really dud vehicles from a distance and I'd assume a lot of those to be tipper trucks and skip lorries. The way a lot of firms running those vehicles leave a lot to be desired and a number border on the bounds of legality for various reasons.
I think it'd help a lot of people if the police were to carry out more spot checks on all types of motor vehicles they consider suspect. I see a lot of cars and vans that are obviously not roadworthy, whether for common issues such as flat tyres or broken tail-lights, or for more serious problems such as chassis and steering defects.
“concentrate on driving and not be continuously checking for cyclists."
WTF? Part of driving is the ability to spot hazards and adjust accordingly. Be they stray pets, pedestrians, cyclist or other vehicles. This is madness!
Oh I'm sorry, must get up to speed with modern life. Driving is about automating as much as possible so that you can update Facespace or Mybook or whatever after you've called the office, whilst you are drinking your morning coffee because you are too lazy to get out of bed earlier or in too much of a hurry to care about other users.
For the sake of everyone, stop making vehicles safer and get the stupid, self centred, selfish, soft, squishy organic thing to be safer. Take your foot off the gas pedal and place it on the brake pedal and slow down if you are not sure. The same concept as stop pedalling and squeeze the brake lever if you are not sure. Simples!