Monday 24 August 2009

Dangerous lorries

The worst offenders came from the Czech Republic where over 60 per cent of its drivers who were stopped on British roads in 2007-8 were found to be unroadworthy.

More than one in two Polish and Hungarian HGV drivers were also found to be operating unfit vehicles as had over 40 per cent of Belgian, German and Italian trucks.

But that’s not all.

Nearly 47% of foreign vehicles stopped were found to have dangerous defects, compared with 37.5% for UK vehicles.

Hang on? Did I read that right? Over one in three British lorries has a dangerous defect?

And what are the government and the police doing about it?

Er, you guessed.

Zilch.

We wouldn’t want to upset the road haulage industry, would we?