DVSA Securing loads and maintaining safe roads reminder

Ensuring loads are secure is vital for road user safety and it’s really important that you, as operators and drivers follow the guidance.

Pulling a load over 40 tons, combined with an unsecured load with considerable height and the permitted speed on the UK’s road network, can create an incredibly dangerous combination.

Hauling heavy goods is a serious responsibility and if it goes wrong, it can have serious consequences, that can and has ended in the loss of life.

While we know the vast majority of you know this and take the issue seriously, there’s still a significant threat caused by the small portion of drivers who don’t. Our enforcement teams prohibited just shy of 1,000 vehicles that were clearly insecurely loaded between April 2018 and April 2019. If we could see that, so could those drivers.

In 2013, there were 22,000 road collisions in England due to objects falling from vehicles. We responded to this, by creating a video and guide to support vehicle operators and drivers transport loads securely. We updated our online guidance as recently as November 2020.

But, it’s not only on the roads that load issues can cause problems. Items falling out of vehicles during unloading are a serious risk. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that workplace transport accounts for over half of all death or injury incidents reported. A risk that isn’t worth taking.

Further information:

https://movingon.blog.gov.uk/2021/07/05/securing-loads-and-maintaining-safe-roads/