Plaid highlights danger of tired foreign truckers

Operation Mermaid has been running a while, but I think its focus is more on WHAT the trucks are carrying, (illegal imports and immigrants!) rather than the drivers themselves.

Problem is that the so-called European Union is anything but united. Every country has different rules and regs, and of course different languages.

A trucker driving in Wales from say Poland has already gone thru Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, England - and there is no way of checking up on their hours thru all these different places. Qualcomm, driver tech and that kinda thing just don't happen here. East and West Europe continue to be two different continents!

I would also guess that a fair number of licences aren't even genuine, its easy to buy "qualifications" on the internet in a lot of Eastern Europe, and then of course when you get to the Uk nobody checks up on them becuase of the different language.
I know of one London ER that employed four Polish "nurses", these guys claimed to be the equivalent of RNs, and had a heap of foreign papers. Turned out they were two builders, a plumber and a trucker!
But nursing jobs offer free apartments to foreigners, so...........

Anyway, going off topic, but yah this East-West Europe thing is a problem. But like everything else it will take a tragedy before any government wakes up to it.

 

Tonight i read about volvo truck manufactoring in europe. Production is down 99.7%. This year they have only sold 115 new trucks. Last year 41,000. Massive layoffs coming.