France has launched a crackdown on long-distance lorry drivers who dice with death by watching films from behind the wheel - and, in one case, cooking at the same time.
The issue has become such a serious traffic hazard that the government last week raised the penalties for film-watching truckers from 135 euros (£111) to 1,500 euros (£1,236) and the number of licence penalty points lost from two to three.
Police were first alerted to the problem in 2008 when they stopped a truck driver on a motorway in southwestern France whose eyes were glued to a small screen in his cab.
Truckers, they have since discovered, have film-watching down to a fine art. One common blind driving technique is to listen out for steady hum of a wheel on the grooved white line of the breakdown lane. Thanks to the automatic speed regulator, drivers need not even keep their feet on the pedals. In fact, several have been stopped with theirs up on the dashboard.
The advent of a new GPS and speed regulator system stands to make the risky task even easier.
One driver was so confident at multi-tasking that he was caught cooking a meal on a hotplate while watching his favourite flick. Another was stopped while viewing a feature and playing the drums.Last year some 324 drivers were fined for the offence.
Police suspect the dangerous practice may have caused the death of a motorist struck by a truck as she walked along the hard shoulder after her vehicle broke down.
Detection methods include night patrols in search of a telltale blue haze in cabs from screens on the passenger seat or dashboard. Motorbike-borne gendarmes have become deft at standing on their footrests to peer into truck windows. But the most effective technique is the use of binoculars from a bridge above oncoming traffic, with offenders stopped by colleagues a few miles down the road.
“Often they have no idea why they’ve been pulled over,” commander Fara N’Doye of the Aude road security brigade told Le Figaro newspaper.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to get tough with lorry driving film buffs is part of a wider road safety crackdown, as he seeks to honour a pledge to bring the annual road death rate down to 3,000 in 2012. The number of deaths has been halved in the past decade, down to just under 4,000 last year, according to the interior ministry. But there has been a recent rise.
Last month, the French government outlawed the use of speed trap detectors - an offence punishable by a 1,500-euro fine and the loss of six licence points.
I see drivers with their legs on the dash,having a smoke,when i pass them or vice versa,and got a dvd on as well.
About time too…
Sah them reading Newspapers and Books.
I often see them at night and they are not all Eastern Europeans, I saw a Tuffnells driver coming onto the M1 at juntion 15 with his laptop fired up and in his full view. Absolute idiots…
John-truckersinfo:
I often see them at night and they are not all Eastern Europeans, I saw a Tuffnells driver coming onto the M1 at juntion 15 with his laptop fired up and in his full view. Absolute idiots…
I quite often have my laptop fired up and in my full view.
An old 10" screen Compac.
Its my sat-nav. I have Autoroute and a GPS receiver and I use it a lot.