European police take action on truck and bus safety

Two recent operations handled by pan-European police body TISPOL have helped tackle truck and bus safety. The action taken against rogue trucking firms led to more than 4,000 immediate vehicle prohibitions. This followed checks on nearly 184,908 trucks across 29 countries and resulted in police handing out charges for a total of 48,386 separate offences. Those included 187 drivers being charged for alcohol and drug offences, 4,691 offences of exceeding the speed limit, 10,306 instances of drivers exceeding
April 14, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Two recent operations handled by pan-European police body 4753 TISPOL have helped tackle truck and bus safety. The action taken against rogue trucking firms led to more than 4,000 immediate vehicle prohibitions. This followed checks on nearly 184,908 trucks across 29 countries and resulted in police handing out charges for a total of 48,386 separate offences. Those included 187 drivers being charged for alcohol and drug offences, 4,691 offences of exceeding the speed limit, 10,306 instances of drivers exceeding their maximum permitted time at the wheel. They also included 1,204 overweight trucks and 1,112 insecure loads and 4,122 immediate prohibitions on trucks, most of which were due to technical defects

Stopping truck drivers to conduct safety checks offences also provided police officers with the opportunity to make other appropriate security enquiries. For example, officers also detected and dealt with offences connected with irregular immigration and human trafficking (6), wanted persons (26), possession of drugs (22), firearms (5), stolen goods (15) and other crimes (628).

Tackling bus safety, officers across 29 European countries conducted safety checks on long-distance coaches during a seven-day TISPOL operation. The checks resulted in the detection of 4,461 traffic offences and a further 44 crimes.

The offences included 697 cases of exceeding the speed limit, 25 drink-drive detections, 822 seatbelt offences and 299 contraventions of tachograph regulations. Included in the total of 115 crimes were 40 illegal immigration and human trafficking offences, 15 drug detections and 44 other crimes.

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