English - Nooteboom Giants on the Road Magazine English - Nr. 5 - 2018 | Page 17

REGULATIONS
The driver of a heavy transport
drives during the night in
Belgium, during the day in
France, during the night in
Germany and during the day in
the Netherlands. And then in
Belgium you also have to deal
with the curfews. Another prob-
lem is the congested parking lots.
It’s not easy to respect the driving
times and rest periods all the
time. The parking problem causes
another problem too: if a heavy
transport crosses the border into
Belgium, the escort is supposed
to check the exemption and the
vehicle. Should that take place on
the hard shoulder then, if there is
no place to park? Definitely not,
because we want to prevent unsafe
situations but at the moment there
is no exception in the regulations
that would permit the drive to go
and find a safe place to park.”
DIGITAL REGISTRATION
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Map of the 90-tonnes and 120-tonnes network
Gert: “All escorted transports
must be registered digitally. In theory this is an excellent system. The
exemption is valid for 2 or 4 months. During that period the transport
operator is free to choose a day or several days on which the transport
take place. Some transports are registered with us more than once. If we
want to go and check one of them we are sometimes told the transport
is delayed or has been carried out the previous day. We hope to be able
to follow the transports via track & trace in a few years from now. That
would prevent us from travelling to a location to perform checks and
have a wasted journey. At the moment it often like looking
for a needle in a haystack. On some days dozens of
transports are registered to take place but only a few of
them are actually carried out. Upholding the system
can only succeed if there is a fair chance of catching
the offenders.”
DRIVERS
Gert: “Anyone with a valid driving licence can go on
the road with an abnormal transport. It used to be
quite an honour to be the driver of a large combi-
nation. That is changing. The driver has to comply
with so many regulations in the various countries
that he is bound to do something wrong. But we still
come across companies who hardly ever do anything
wrong. Other companies – very well-known ones
too – used to be caught time and time again, but they
have cleaned up their act. There is one category we keep tabs on: the
companies that systematically evade the rules. These are companies that
factor in the fines. For those companies we apply the rules as rigorously
as possible. And in practice that means that a combination may be
parked up for few weeks waiting for the correct exemption.”
WINDMILL TRANSPORT
Gert: “Transports of windmill components from and to the Belgian
seaports are increasing all the time. In the past we have stopped a
transport with a length of nearly 80 metres, travelling from Denmark
to Ostend. In Germany and the Netherlands this transport can
without problems travel on the motorways, but in Belgium the route
leads along secondary roads if the total mass of the transport exceeds
44 tonnes. We invited the transport operator and a representative
of the windmill manufacturer to come and have a chat. We would
prefer to see these transports shipped over water, but transporting
them over the road is more flexible, cheaper and the load needs to be
transferred fewer times so there’s less risk of damage.”
Belgium is in a transitional state. The i ssuing of exemptions is done
via the various regions, but they still have to get used to their new
tasks. The rules for escorts have changed but the new regulations will
probably not start to function properly until well into 2018. And the
road network in Belgium has not kept up with the rapid progress of
technology. These days a heavy low-loader that can carry more than
100 tonnes is no exception, but many Belgian roads cannot cope with
this kind of weight. In daily practice many transports will make a
detour via the Netherlands or Germany.
Gert Bervoets: “The regions understand the problems of the trans-
port operators. Wherever possible the regulations will be improved
during the next few years. And we would also like to introduce a
registration system for vehicles from abroad, like they have in the
Netherlands. Solving the problems with the road network will take
much longer. In areas around the seaports many bridges have already
been renovated, but further inland there is still a lot of work to be
done.” ■
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