A multi-agency road safety unit responsible for cracking down on unsafe HGVs has been praised after it reported that half of all vehicles stopped needed improvements to make them roadworthy.
On Thursday the Industrial HGV Taskforce announced that 4,000 vehicles have been stopped since it begun operations in October 2013, of which 1,013 were issued Fixed Penalty Notices and 47 were taken off the road.
The taskforce, which includes officers from the Met, Transport for London and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, also issued 2,000 roadworthiness prohibitions requiring drivers and owners to address defects with their vehicles.
Transport Commissioner, Sir Peter Hendy CBE, said: “These results show that our Industrial HGV Task Force is going from strength to strength to identify and take action against dangerous and non-compliant operators and drivers of HGVs, particularly construction vehicles, on London’s roads.
“These enforcement results send out a clear message to everyone concerned that we will not tolerate or put other road users, cyclists or pedestrians at risk through the actions of the minority of negligent operators and drivers in the capital.”
The task force’s performance has been praised by Baroness Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the London Assembly who campaigns for improvements in road safety.
Welcoming today’s figures, Baroness Jones said: “This is great work by the Met’s traffic police, but it shows how long overdue it is.
“Of the 4,000 HGVs stopped, half of them need to take action to be roadworthy, 1,000 of them get fixed penalty notices and 47 are taken off the road straight away.
“That indicates to me that the Met are good at targeting the bad vehicles, yet they need to be doing an awful lot more of this to really make an impact.
“Too many people are killed or injured on London’s roads, with lorries being responsible for a lot of those tragic unnecessary deaths.”
Return Loads says
It is important that this type of taskforce exists to catch the illegal drivers and vehicles.