Police have charged a truck driver after checks on his heavy vehicle on the Pacific Highway at Chinderah found it was unregistered and extremely defective.
The B-double, laden with watermelons, was stopped by Traffic and Highway Patrol officers and Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) inspectors just before 6.30pm on Saturday.
Police and RMS are clamping down on speeding, fatigue and mechanical defects involving heavy vehicles in the Ballina and Tweed Heads areas as part of Operation DUSTY 3 2012.
The prime mover was unregistered, with major oil and air leaks and badly worn tyres.
Both trailers were checked over and found to have faulty brakes and a total of 12 bald tyres. Inspectors also found the load of watermelons was not properly secured.
The driver, a 41-year-old man from Young, was charged with a range of offences and will appear in Tweed Heads Local Court on Monday 4 June.
At 9.35am on the same day, police charged the driver of a northbound Queensland-registered B-Double after it was detected travelling at 124km/h in a heavy-vehicle 100km/h-limited area ofx the Pacific Highway at Cudgera Creek.
‘By demonstrating this sort of lack of personal responsibility, truck drivers not only place themselves in grave danger but pose a very real threat to other road users,’ Superintendent Stuart Smith from Traffic and Highway Patrol Command said.
‘Traffic and Highway Patrol officers, with the assistance of RMS inspectors, will continue to target such offences to bolster road safety,’ he said.
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