Irish lorries among worst offenders for defects in British road checks

Irish-registered lorries are among the worst offenders for mechanical and trailer defects, overloading and breaches in rules on driving time limits of all foreign trucks checked on roads in Britain.

Figures from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the UK vehicle safety watchdog, show Irish heavy goods vehicles were third worst offenders for “mechanical prohibitions” – behind Romania and Bulgaria – on checks made by the regulator in the year to March 2022.

Of all foreign trucks, Irish-registered HGVs had the worst record for being overloaded, with more than half of all lorries weighed by the safety watchdog found to be overloaded. Irish HGVs had the fifth worst record for trailer defects after Romania, Spain, Bulgaria and Turkey, according to checks carried out in the year.

Drivers of Irish-registered lorries had the joint second-worst record (with Turkey) for breaches of the regulations on tachograph rules that limit driving hour limits. Portuguese drivers were the worst offenders.

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The figures were released under the Freedom of Information Act by the DVSA, an agency of the UK’s transport department, to an Irish citizen concerned about road safety issues. The DVSA covers commercial vehicle inspections on roads in Britain; a separate UK agency covers checks on vehicle standards in Northern Ireland.

In 2021/2022, one in five Irish HGV vehicles checked – 240 out of 1,193 – had mechanical issues, while almost one third of trailers checked – 376 out of 1,281 – had defects. Out of 1,483 traffic checks on Irish-registered lorries, 64 drivers or 4.3 per cent breached rules on driving hour limits.

The previous year Irish drivers were the worst offenders for breaching driver hour limits, with 51 or 4.1 per cent of 1,241 drivers stopped in traffic checks breaching their time limits.

Of 134 Irish lorries weighed, 73 or 54 per cent were found to be overloaded. This was the second year in a row that Irish HGVs were the worst offenders for overloading. The previous year, to March 2021, some 68 Irish lorries were found to be overloaded out of 100, a rate of 68 per cent, well ahead of the Netherlands (48 per cent) and Spain (41 per cent) that year.

Aidan Flynn, general manager of Freight Transport Association Ireland, said the figures were “a wake-up call” for Irish HGVs driving in a country with a regime of high enforcement.

“There is always a high risk of getting stopped and checked. From an Ireland Inc competitive perspective, we do not want to be top of the table in terms of noncompliance,” he said. “Some drivers may argue that some of the issues were minor, and the majority of them are, but the mindset has to be zero defects and that drivers know the limits of their vehicles.”

Irish Road Haulage Association president Eugene Drennan put the high rate of defects and prohibitions against Irish lorries down to the fact that Irish drivers were travelling into Britain on the same ferries at the same times every day and so were the focus of more intensive enforcement.

“Why are we so high? It is because we are fish in a barrel coming out of the port. We are the nationality they can get on any day at a particular time. Other nationalities are coming in at different times. If they are having a check on a foreign truck, we are the obvious targets,” he said.

Mr Drennan said that many mechanical prohibitions were “not of a serious nature” and put the tachograph breaches down to “technical” issues around “split breaks” and rest periods on ferries. “At the same time, on paper it doesn’t look great,” he added.

A spokesman for the DVSA told The Irish Times that it targeted vehicles it identifies as posing the greatest risk to road safety. “We have a range of enforcement tools, intelligence and sanctions that enable us to do this,” he said. “We want to remind operators of their responsibilities to observe driver and vehicle safety requirements to keep their drivers and other road users safe.”