Crackdown coming on overweight, extra-large trucks

The Ministry of Works and Transport intends to crack down on all overweight and extra-large trucks on the roads.

Addressing the nine members of the newly constituted National Road Safety Council during the distribution of instruments of appointment on Monday at the ministry in Port of Spain, the minister, Rohan Sinanan, told the members they should get to work immediately, as this is one matter he wanted dealt with urgently.

Overweight and extra-large trucks, Sinanan said continue to cause some damage. He said he needs to have meetings with the board to ensure that they fully use the new electronic scanning technology to get into the system and identify some of the overweight and extra-large trucks on the road.

“Overweight trucks damage the road network and trucks that are not licensed for certain routes – the reason why they’re not licensed for certain routes is because those routes were never designed for that size of trucks. I am hoping that they can use the technology that they’re using now to identify vehicles that were not inspected, vehicles that should not be on the road. We could use that on the roads so when officers see a truck operating on a road, they can check to see if that truck was licensed for that route.”

He said a lot of roads in Trinidad are too narrow.

“If we have an 18-wheeler truck coming around the corner on that road, it has to go on the opposite side, and that puts people at risk.”