In a age where we have drivers doing double shifts with different companies and not telling each about the other.  Where drivers are pulling charts and driving without a chart, winding clocks back, driving over hours and failing to take daily and weekly rest. Where fuses are removed, magnets used and speed limiters tampered with, to allow vehicles to be driven unrestricted, one Staffordshire enforcement officer prohibited a vehicle for having a defective speed limiter based on the chart opposite.  This surely cannot be the way to promote co-operation between the Hauliers and the Enforcement Agencies. This type of thing just serves to drive a wedge between the two, when many hauliers see blatant abuses of the regulations going unpunished.

He prohibited this vehicle for having a defective speed limiter and in his outline of the offence he mentions that the speed hits 100kms/hour at 08.49hrs.  If you look at the example you will see that this is for an extremely short period and results from a laden vehicle on over-run, going down bank, for less than one minute. Obviously this person hasn't heard of over-runs, or does he expect the driver to sit on his brakes all the time that he is going down an incline. If he does be prepared for a lot more accidents due to brake fade.

Any enforcement officer worth his salt could go out every day of the week and find the true culprits - the ones where the speed is 100km/hour or more for hours not one minute.  Where it is blatantly obvious to anyone that the speedlimter is not working, not when it is just over the limit.  

The speed limiter was in fact working, albeit that it was set slightly high - from new.  The vehicle was only 2 years old and yes it had passed an MOT test, just two months prior, with the limiter set exactly as it was when stopped by this officer.

Be warned that you risk being prohibited if your speed limiter is set above 90km/hour.  If in doubt have it checked, because we do not have the advantage of a sophisticated speed measuring instrument, we only have visual checks on charts, which in themselves are in accurate.  In this particular case the speed trace when stationary travelled along the base line at the start of the chart, but was slightly above it at the end, thereby putting the top of the speed trace higher and this officer expects people to be able to determine whether or not a speedlimter is set at 90, 91 or 92, just by looking at the charts, when some charts don't even have a 90 kms/hour line!

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