A1 South Yorkshire: Police pull over lorry driver who had been behind the wheel for 17 hours straight

A driver was caught behind the wheel of a truck for over 17 hours without taking a break in South Yorkshire.

Last week (January 31), roads policing officers and colleagues from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) stopped 28 vehicles on the A1 as part of ongoing work to reduce casualties on South Yorkshire’s roads.

The operation focussed on heavy goods vehicles and those carrying dangerous goods.

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Of those stopped, nine drivers were issued penalties for overweight vehicles, six drivers were found to be exceeding their driving hours, and one was even found to have been behind the wheel consecutively for 17 hours straight.

Further offences included improper use of a tachograph, not wearing a seatbelt, driving while on a mobile phone, inappropriately using the hard shoulder and vehicle defects or being unsafe.

The latest figures show the number of people killed or injured on South Yorkshire’s roads increased by 18 per cent from 2021 to 2022.

Roads Policing Inspector Matt Collings said: "Reducing fatalities and casualties remains our priority to creating safer roads.

"These operations are not about targeting certain drivers or businesses, but around ensuring that the law is abided and acknowledging that road traffic collisions involving larger vehicles can be catastrophic, so ensuring they are road worthy and safe is vitally important.

"Every driver and vehicle can be involved in a serious collision, but the rules around weight, driving hours and vehicle condition are there to ensure that the risk is reduced.

"Preventative work is difficult to measure but removing the driver from the road after they’d been driving for 17 hours without a break will have certainly reduced the likelihood of him causing a collision.

"We all have a part to play in creating safer roads and I hope the penalties imposed make drivers think twice and change their behaviour."