Police/RMS action around Huntingwood, Eastern Creek, Moorebank and Smithfield focused on driver fatigue, speed limiter tampering, vehicle standards and mass and load restraints
November 16, 2012
The NSW Police Force and the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) have been targeting heavy vehicles in Sydney’s west.
The new initiative, Operation Delivery, is focused on driver fatigue, speed limiter tampering, vehicle standards and mass and load restraints in vehicles operating out of the Huntingwood, Eastern Creek, Moorebank and Smithfield areas.
It follows the detection of speeding trucks during the week when inquiries identified further compliance issues and alleged speed limiter tampering, according to police.
Before the operation began, two trucks were stopped at the Marulan Heavy Vehicle Checking Station for being over their approved mass.
Both trucks were grounded with their operator forced to dispatch further trucks to remove the excess freight.
Superintendent Stuart Smith, Operations Commander of the NSW Police Force’s Traffic and Highway Patrol, says this is the seventh heavy vehicle compliance operation to be conducted this year.
“Police with the assistance of RMS will continue to target the trucking industry in an effort to ensure compliance with legislation and increase safety standards,” he adds.
“We have already detected a number of trucks which were found to be grossly overloaded and not complying with mass and load restraints.
“These early figures are of great concern and the fact is that an overloaded truck or a truck with a poorly restrained load has the potential to be involved in a serious or fatal crash.
“There is little room for error when operating a heavy vehicle and we have seen that crashes involving heavy vehicles are far more likely to be serious with statistics showing almost 20 per cent of road fatalities involve trucks.”
On Wednesday, a 49-year-old truck driver from Queensland was killed when his B-Double truck collided with the rear of a semi-trailer on the Pacific Highway at Herons Creek near Port Macquarie.
“We are now investigating whether fatigue was a factor in this crash,” Smith says.
