Almost UAH 132 Million Worth of Freight Truck Overload Fines Over 9 Days

3,849 violations were discovered during the 9 days of testing WiM stations with sensors embedded under the road to detect overweight long-haul trailers. The stations were launched in Ukraine on July 16.

Most violations (1,140) were detected on the M22 highway (Poltava—Oleksandriia) near the Pidhorivka.

The second-largest number of violations (583) was reported on the H23 highway (Kropyvnytskyi—Kriviy Rih—Zaporizhzhia) near the Berezhinka.

The last of the top three is the M07 (Kyiv—Kovel—Yahodyn) highway near Zahaltsi (566).

Overloaded trucks destroy asphalt, especially in summer, when it gets heated up by the sun. With this in mind, almost 50 Weigh-in-Motion systems have been installed all over the country. The systems include sensors that measure the vehicle’s weight and size, capture its license plate, and transfer the information to the database. The information on all violations is already available on the national open data portal. Freight carriers will also learn about the registration of their violations and fines accrued automatically via Opendatabot.

Starting September, when the system is launched in full, not only the driver but the freight carrier company will be responsible for compliance with freight requirements. The State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety plans to set the non-compliance fines at UAH 8,500—UAH 51,000. Freight market participants thus sign contracts strictly compliant with the weight and size regulations. Also, it will help identify the offender companies whose overweight transport damages Ukrainian roads.

The new monitoring system will run in test mode until fall 2021. During the trial period, it will notify offenders about their violations, albeit with no real fine accrual. There is already an appreciable indication of its efficiency: all fines that could have been accrued during the first 9 days of the trial amounted to UAH 131,801,000.