Those surface loops are right up the network, if you look to the left on the verge beside the hard shoulder, you’ll see a weather station, the loops in the road measure the temperature. When it drops below a certain level in the winter it triggers an alarm in the control centre and the gritters get scrambled. 
ROG:
I do believe that everyone has the legal right to ‘contest’ any issued penalty.
A court will make the final decision.
Yeah you could refuse the fixed penality and decide to go to court, but if its a case of their word against yours on something the court is going to side with VOSA typically and then your looking at court costs and a larger fine.
Problem is really commiting offences which should be dealt with by a warning which no doubt now will just carry a fixed penality, the difference between the spirt of the law and the letter of the law.
This country has moved towards the letter of the law on most things these days.
This is all ok til VOSA realise how much money they can make … then they will start on the UK boys too ( don’t tell me the UK drivers are entirely innocent).
Your remark about ‘unsafe’ foreign trucks doesn’t hold water these days as if you was to open your eyes, the days of Eastern Europeans driving around in motors held together with baling wire and gaffer tape are long gone. Most of them are in better trucks than our’s nowadays.
But what actually grabs me is the disparity in the fines. OK, we all want safer drivers on the roads and I fully agree with that.
Let me give you three examples. All three of these guys are known to me personally and it is NOT ‘pub talk’ as I have seen the tickets.
Driver A) Caught on a Sunday night at 2100 at Oxford with a card in, but nothing written on it.
Driver B) Captured at Crick and parked up for 45 hours due to insufficient weekly rest.
Driver C) Despite VOSA going over truck and trailer with a fine tooth comb, all cards being scanned etc (this took 90 minutes) and finding nothing wrong except for a little ticket on the inside of the drivers door that said the unit had been calibrated with 295’s on but he had 315’s on the unit.
All three were fined … I’ll come back tomorrow morning before I go to Fortress Stamford Bridge and reveal the fines etc. In the meantime, have some fun by having a guess!!!
[/quote]
so you havent noticed the fairly new foriegn renault drawbar thats got an obvious n/s/f,wheel problem(its jacked up)with no driver thats been sitting in vosa checkpoint at scotch corner all week with a clamp on it??.
i entirley agree however,that i think vosa has been given a licence to print money,based on some of the fines drivers are getting,im curious to know though,is it a drivers responsibility to make sure the correct size tyres are fitted to the truck in relation to the vtg6 plate,or perhaps the operator?
The Highway Man:
Those surface loops are right up the network, if you look to the left on the verge beside the hard shoulder, you’ll see a weather station, the loops in the road measure the temperature. When it drops below a certain level in the winter it triggers an alarm in the control centre and the gritters get scrambled.
That’s given me the amusing mental image of all the gritters on alert five waiting loaded ready to go with the drivers lounging around drinking coffee until a bell rings and someone pops through the window shouting “scramble scramble scramble”
TheBear:
This is all ok til VOSA realise how much money they can make … then they will start on the UK boys too ( don’t tell me the UK drivers are entirely innocent).
Your remark about ‘unsafe’ foreign trucks doesn’t hold water these days as if you was to open your eyes, the days of Eastern Europeans driving around in motors held together with baling wire and gaffer tape are long gone. Most of them are in better trucks than our’s nowadays.But what actually grabs me is the disparity in the fines. OK, we all want safer drivers on the roads and I fully agree with that.
Let me give you three examples. All three of these guys are known to me personally and it is NOT ‘pub talk’ as I have seen the tickets.Driver A) Caught on a Sunday night at 2100 at Oxford with a card in, but nothing written on it.
Driver B) Captured at Crick and parked up for 45 hours due to insufficient weekly rest.
Driver C) Despite VOSA going over truck and trailer with a fine tooth comb, all cards being scanned etc (this took 90 minutes) and finding nothing wrong except for a little ticket on the inside of the drivers door that said the unit had been calibrated with 295’s on but he had 315’s on the unit.All three were fined … I’ll come back tomorrow morning before I go to Fortress Stamford Bridge and reveal the fines etc. In the meantime, have some fun by having a guess!!!
buck73:
so you havent noticed the fairly new foriegn renault drawbar thats got an obvious n/s/f,wheel problem(its jacked up)with no driver thats been sitting in vosa checkpoint at scotch corner all week with a clamp on it??.
i entirley agree however,that i think vosa has been given a licence to print money,based on some of the fines drivers are getting,im curious to know though,is it a drivers responsibility to make sure the correct size tyres are fitted to the truck in relation to the vtg6 plate,or perhaps the operator?
I never get up near Scotch Corner, Buck. I’d get a nosebleed if I did.
For those even slightly interested, Driver A got a £30 fine for having a blank card in. Driver B got £50 for insufficient weekly rest and Driver C got £200 for what was a genuine mistake BY THE TESTING STATION!!! The vehicle in question is or was a prototype … a 105 with a 95 body on it. When it went to the testing station, the guy that calibrated it worked on the assumption that 99% of DAF’s are on 295’s and so wrote that on the ticket without looking at the tyres. The unit has always had 315’s on it. But we were gobsmacked at how he got a £200 fine when the other two guys that were much more obviously up to no good got pittance fines. By the way, the tyre one was the sad muvvers at Stafford.
ROG:
I do believe that everyone has the legal right to ‘contest’ any issued penalty.
A court will make the final decision.
you could do that Rog but if you loose you have court costs and you could end up with a larger fine
I had an interesting run in with vosa last week on the thursday I was on my way to wrexham when the dreaded galaxy appears in front of me and the sign lights up
gets to the check point to be told " your driving round without the wagon being plated "
i replied with " i think youll find it is "
" No its not according to the computer" was vosa mans reply
" actually its plated, try ringing swynertton test station as it went through yesterday afternoon" was my reply as i had taken the wagon up along with one of our fitters
so his mate comes over and starts going over the wagon with a fine toothed comb and another one was going through my tachos
so after the one whos been checking my wagon has finished and discovered theres nothing wrong at all and its excedingly clean underneath, and the one who had been checking my tacho’s had found nothing wrong , the one who pulled me in came over looking rather red faced , as he had rung up swynertton to check my story and lo and behold he he was told it had passed with one advisory (which our garage had fixed before giving me the wagon back)
smarmy git didnt even have the decency to apologise to me
this is the way i see it…
im not against vosa,i believe they serve an invaluble and needed role within the transport industry,i dont mind getting tugged by them,i aint got nothing to hide.BUT i have serious reservations over the new fines system,and hope it doesnt turn out that drivers are fined for very menial infringements to boost vosa"s coffers,so they can implement more check sites,and a new and bigger fleet of galaxys,pay rises,and the routine goverment “cut”,all paid for to the detrement of the average joe who goes over his time by 10 mins once in a blue moon.i really hope this is not the case.i also do not like the way new fines are fitted around the current drivers laws and seem to be just getting made up along the way. 
Not truck related, but was speaking to the guy who does my MOT’s he recently had a run in with VOSA.
They came to investigate because the garages first time pass rates where higher than the other garages in the area.
This garage i go to is really busy with fixing cars, they do a lot of work. If your car fails a MOT they typically won’t fix it because they already have so much work, so unlike other garages there is no incentive to fail cars to get work, they don’t need to work. So gave a very fair MOT and are not out just to get it to fail.
A lot of the time someone goes there for a MOT, if say a bulb is out, or wiper blades knackered he will tell the person to go up the shop 2mins away buy the bit and he will put it on for them to get the car through. Same with headlight alignment if its out he will typically just correct it there and then so the car passes, thinks its a waste of his time failing cars on daft things, then the car has to be rebooked in etc…
Also a fact a lot of the garages customers are also trade who tend to fix the cars before they bring them for a MOT and typically are MOT standard before foing for their test, because the trade customers don’t want to waste time coming down for a MOT to have to go away fix it then bring it back, its wasted time.
VOSA werent happy, they werent happy either the bosses MOT pass rate was higher than all the other mechanics in the place. The boss turned round said i am the boss, i pick the cars i MOT, if you look at all the cars i am MOT’ing they are all mostly cars under 5 years old, i get the luxury of picking the cars i MOT i’m the boss i can’t be bothered going under 10 year old bangers getting covered in oil, grease and rust.
Eventually after an investigation and a lot of hassle VOSA admited the garage was profesional and doing everything correct, and chances were the other garages had lower first time pass rates because they were setting out to fail cars to make money fixing them.
But since them the mechanics now paranoid, gone from just quickly change that bulb or i’ll quickly adjust the headlight alignment to, sorry mate i’m gonna fail your car, just take it out the bay and we will replace that bulb etc… then we will do a retest.
VOSTAPPO"S, VOSTAPPOS, all part of the old gatappo army, and even then they were total ■■■ pots!!!, no time for em in any shape or form, could all burn for all i care, bitter me narrrrr well maybe a little 
ave iiiiiiiiiiit