Higher number of heavy vehicles found overloaded

The police detected a significant number of overloading cases during a traffic control operation conducted all over the country last week and the number was unreasonably high in comparison with the number of vehicles inspected, said the National Police Board in a press release on Tuesday.

During the heavy traffic control operation a total of 1,206 vehicles were inspected and 45 of them carried an overload.

“We have still seen no change for the better, as we had hoped,” said Chief Superintendent of the National Police Board Heikki Kallio.

Kallio, however, was satisfied with the result of rest period the trend has been positive in controls this year. The total number of driving time and rest period infringements was 73, exceptionally low in relation to the number of inspections conducted.

A total of 264 different sanctions were imposed on the drivers. The number of sanctions was slightly lower in relation to the number of inspected vehicles than during the corresponding campaign last year.

Some of the drivers were given sanctions for more than one violation. About 14 percent of the vehicles inspected were foreign.

Defectively secured loads resulted in several sanctions, 64 in all, and sanctions were imposed in 46 cases due to malfunctions in the vehicles.

In five of these cases, the journey had to be discontinued completely. A total of 242 admonitions were issued for various smaller violations.