A trucker has appeared in court in Sweden this week over accusations he made a false alarm when falsely claiming his vehicle’s brakes had broken. His emergency call sparked an operation that the local police department said made the film Speed “fade in comparison.”
The incident dates back to May 2020 and occurred in the west of Sweden between Alingsås and Vårgårda.
As was reported at the time, the truck driver claimed that his vehicle’s brakes had stopped working. The driver said he had tried to switch off the ignition and disengage 6th gear, but to no avail. To make matters worse, the truck also had plenty of fuel onboard and was on course to reach a stretch of road with severe traffic congestion.
The police decided against using a stinger mat to burst the lorry’s tyres, as the move was considered too dangerous. Instead, officers came up with the idea of getting the driver to turn off the road into an empty field. A site was found, and a local farmer helped out by filling up and flattening the ditch between his field and the road alongside it. Ultimately, the operation was a success and nobody was hurt. The farmer was also hailed as a “hero” by the local police department.
However, a vehicle inspection conducted after the 90-minute ordeal found that the lorry had no defects whatsoever.
As a consequence, the driver is currently in court after being accused of making a hoax call and unnecessarily wasting the time of the Swedish emergency services. The truck was escorted by police for over an hour, and there was significant traffic disruption as a result of roads being shut off.
The trucker claims that the lorry’s brakes somehow started working again after the hit the vehicle took when leaving the road and entering the farmer’s field. The prosecution are not convinced though.
Mystery nonetheless still surrounds the case. As transportarbetaren.se reports, no motive for making the false alarm has emerged. The driver was also completely sober at the time of the incident.
The prosecution says that the driver’s employers will testify that the trucker has a track record of making false reports of truck defects. It is claimed that the trucker made 8 reports of defects in spring 2020 alone, including a fire that could not be evidenced during a later check.
Photo credits: Svensk polis