Condition of Russian lorries on Finnish roads significantly improved
(HS) The condition of lorries arriving in Finland across the country’s eastern has improved significantly. According to Finnish police, the quality of vehicles used by foreign haulage companies is getting to be close to that of Finnish trucks.
Finland’s Traffic Police have been closely scrutinising the condition of heavy goods vehicles in the southeast of Finland this week. According to police superintendent Jouni Ryhänen, the director of the campaign, the foreign vehicles are no longer in any worse shape than those owned and driven by Finns.
“Competition works. In some cases, the vehicles are even better than what the Finns have”, Ryhänen says.
Most of the foreign trucks are Russian.
During the crackdown, the police plan to inspect thoroughly more than 100 domestic and foreign lorry-trailer combinations. On the first day, 64 vehicles were inspected, and 36 drivers were given fines or warnings.
Jari Strengell of the traffic police in the Kymeenlaakso region says that in spite of the high proportion of vehicles with shortcomings, there is no reason for other motorists to worry too much. He said that a great many of the problems involved minor issues such as faulty lights, which do not necessarily have immediate serious implications for traffic safety.
During the week only one vehicle was not allowed to continue on its way: the brakes of the trailer on a Finnish lorry did not work at all, and the vehicle was left on the side of the road.
On Thursday, inspections focused on the Port of Hamina, where the violations that were found were mostly minor.
There were exceptions, however: One Russian driver en route from the harbour to the Russian border had failed to secure his load of 900 kg. paper rolls in the trailer. If the lorry had been stopped on the road, the police would have confiscated the driver’s licence without further ado.
“If something like that were on the road, it would be considered serious negligence”, Jouni Ryhänen says.
There have been news reports recently of drink driving by Russian drivers. Six drivers have been stopped for driving under the influence within a few weeks.
Strengell says that Russian traffic discipline is not particularly lax: considering the vast growth in truck of traffic, these kinds of cases are quite rare.
“Most of them are all right - no different from the Finns. But there are always these bad apples that cause everyone problems”, he says.