During the operation, commercial busses and heavy goods vehicles will be stopped and checked at the roadside by Traffic Police Officers together with other relevant enforcement agencies.
Road safety checks are to be carried out, looking into matters such as technical condition, dimensions and weight of the vehicles, and whether the drivers are authorized and adhere to European driving times. This includes inspections on tachographs, cargo and accompanying documents.
The last RoadPol Truck & Bus operation, which took place in October 2021, saw 197,274 HGVs and 111,545 buses checked overall. 77,386 violations were found. The violation rate for HGVs was 35.21% – nearly twice as high as was recorded during an equivalent operation held back in May 2020.
Most of the offences were found in the areas of speed, technical offences, the lack of seat belt wearing and other safety shortcomings.
When it comes to drivers’ hours’ offences, 13,045 drivers drove their vehicle for longer than legally allowed without complying with the mandatory breaks.
“This number has never been higher. The rest periods in the transport sector are not only there to protect the drivers themselves, but also for safety in traffic. Truck and bus drivers can cause serious collisions due to fatigue,” said ROADPOL’s OPG Secretary last November.
In addition to the above, on 6,170 occasions the prescribed tachographs were not properly managed. Manipulations of digital tachographs were also detected in 656 cases.
188 drivers were guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol, while 41 drivers were caught drug-driving. In 5,521 cases serious technical defects were found. Moreover, 2,262 HGVs were found to be overweight, whole load securing was insufficient on 1,257 lorries.