Higher Penalty For Overloading Sought

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 3

Higher Penalty For Overloading Sought

(New Zealand Pre** Auociation)

WELLINGTON, March 13.

The National Roads Board will ask the Government to increase the maximum penalty for overloading trucks, in the hope that this will encourage magistrates to impose heavier penalties.

The Chief Highways Engineer (Mr , F. A. Langbein) told the board today of one transport operator who had been prosecuted 53 times since last May. The only fine of more than £2 had been imposed by a visiting magistrate. Mr Langbein cited the seriousness of present damage to roads by overloaded vehicles in the Rotorua-Bay of Plenty area, and said the highways were deteriorating faster than the board could improve them. Breaches Detected The Commissioner of Transport (Mr R. J. Polaschek) said recent 100 per cent surveys of truck loads in various parts of the country had shown that at Kaingaroa 89 per cent of vehicles were overloaded, at Wanganui 45 per cent, at Nelson 14 per cent, and at Paekakariki 10 per cent. He said his traffic officers were detecting more than 10,000 breaches of the law a year. The effectiveness of this enforcement was not helped by small penalties. The worst offenders, by a

big margin, were carriers of timber and sheep.

The board decided to ask the Government to increase the present £5O fine maximum, and the Transport Department to Improve the effectiveness of its enforcement