Enforcement the key to lorry safety

With half of lorries having major faults, a major crackdown on trucking companies is needed

Should the focus on lorry safety focus on the trucking companies? Stephen Lock / The National

The dangers of unsafe lorries plying our roads hardly need stating, which is why the news is so alarming that more than half of the heavy goods vehicles inspected in Dubai in the first six months of this year were found to have major faults. Through their sheer size and weight, accidents involving lorries tend to be serious, which is why every effort needs to be made to render this essential mode of transport as safe as possible.

The only gratifying aspect of the Road Transport Authority identifying that nearly 10,000 of the lorries it assessed were in seriously substandard condition is that it shows a crackdown is underway. The laws to ensure that the affordable and efficient movement of heavy goods does not come at a cost to safety are neither new nor insufficient. The issue is one of enforcement.

There will always be some unscrupulous employers who seek to maximise their profit margins by bending the safety rules, just as there will always be some drivers who drive far too many hours to increase their income. If they assess the risks of getting caught and being held to account for this behaviour as minimal, they will be tempted to continue. Worse still, it gives them a competitive advantage over their more safety- and community-conscious rivals and provides entirely the wrong incentive.

Many other countries have faced similar issues and found the best approach has been to focus on the companies that are breaching their responsibility, ensuring the penalties are frequent and sufficient enough that this is not seen as just a trifling business expense. If running faulty lorries attracts significant penalties, businesses will have a powerful incentive to improve their standards. Even better, their competitors who have always done the right thing will find themselves at an advantage.

Although companies ought to be the primary focus, attention also needs to paid to drivers and the number of hours they spend behind the wheel. Driver fatigue is often cited as a cause of accidents and it need hardly be said that ensuring all lorries are roadworthy counts for little if the driver is too tired to drive safely.

In both cases, there is also an argument to be made about having more visible enforcement in terms of having traffic patrols on the roads and having random safety inspections of lorries. Ensuring that the existing laws are rigorously enforced will make the roads safer for everyone.