ROADPOL Operation Truck & Bus caimpaign took place from 13th to 19th February 2023.
ROADPOL Operation Truck & Bus is a coordinated European enforcement action by Traffic Police Officers from each ROADPOL member country and takes place on Europe’s roads four times each year.
Commercial busses and heavy goods vehicles are stopped and checked at the roadside by Traffic Police Officers together with other relevant enforcement agencies.
Road safety checks are carried out, such as the technical condition, dimensions and weight of the vehicles, and whether the drivers are authorized and adhere to European driving times. A check of the tachograph is part of this action.
In this 2023 year, the road campaign took place from 13th to 19th February 2023, and will be repeated twice before the end of this year.
ROADPOL has announced that its latest Truck & Bus Operation saw 2,341 trucks forced to discontinue their journeys due to serious violations.
In the last operation, more than 20 ROADPOL member states took part in the operation, in which 121,933 trucks and 91,590 buses were checked.
As many as 51,468 violations were found. On 2,341 occasions a lorry’s journey had to be prohibited until the proper condition of the vehicle or load had been restored.
The complaint rate was 22.11% for freight transport and 3.49% for buses. For freight traffic, this means that a violation was found in almost 1 in 4 trucks checked.
ROADPOL Operational Working Group secretary from the Police of the Netherlands explains that this road action shows that freight traffic represents a major risk to road safety and that monitoring is still necessary.
The result of the control week shows that road inspections in the area of heavy goods traffic and passenger transport are still an important approach to improve traffic safety. In addition to the punishment of violations, the drivers are informed by clarifying discussions on the dangers such as insufficient securing of load, putting on seat belt or fatigue due to exceeding of driving times.
For trucks, most of the offences were found in the area of exceeding driving time, tachograph settings or manipulation, speed and technical offences (including overweight and insecure loads).
More than 10 000 drivers broke drivers’ driving time rules, while 3,607 times prescribed tachographs were not properly managed. Manipulations of digital tachographs were also detected in 468 cases.
More than 200 drivers were also found to be under the influence of alcohol, as well as 80 drivers under the influence of drugs.
More than 900 trucks (< 12 tons), and more than 600 trucks (> 12 tons) and 37 busses were found to be overweight. Finally, load securing was found to be insufficient on 1,541 trucks.
The next ROADPOL Truck & Bus operation will take place from 8th to 14th May 2023
