The road network is the backbone of every country’s infrastructure and the condition for a prosperous economy.
Although most government authorities are aware of the importance to keep it in good conditions, many of them fail on this matter. The most common reason is the lack of resources to do maintenance and repair the roads. What they don’t know is that it is much cheaper to prevent than cure.
But how to protect the roads? Weight enforcement is a part of a sustainable development of road infrastructure and with the right concept and less resources it’s possible to protect the pavement and increase its lifespan.
Nowadays weight enforcement can be done with mobile patrols or stationary systems like weighbridges. In some countries there are automatic systems (weigh-in-motion, WIM) that are able to detect overload vehicles in driving speed on the road or the trucks have independent on board weighing units (OBW) for self-control. Even WIM systems with international certifications are rarely implemented for the direct enforcement, once that authorities from metrology institutes don’t grant local type approvals because of lacks in the international regulations and validations. And even if they were reliable and accurate enough to be use for the direct enforcement, is this reasonable? An automatic system can’t stop the truck immediately to avoid further damaging of the road. OBW’s can be manipulated and must be periodically and officially checked.
The resources collected with fines will never be enough to cover the outgoing for repairing the road network. Therefore the major goal of weight enforcement must be discouraging the drivers to overload, and not only collect resources.
A mobile patrol team using mobile scales is the most efficient way to perform an official weighing control once it increases the social interaction between drivers and enforcement officers. Apart of that, it allows the unload, in case of an extreme overload. According to a study of the University of Manitoba, Canada, mobile weighing on the spot is 30 times more effective in detecting violations than permanent weigh stations. The reason is simple: the drivers can bypass the permanent stations, when a control on spot will catch the drivers by surprise.
Over the past four decades HAENNI Instruments has provided wheel load scales for the police control worldwide and became a reference for the mobile weight enforcement in the 6 continents. Due to its light weight and thin platform, HAENNI scale is very appreciated by the police officers who perform the measurement controls. The OIML certification and EU type approval attest the reliability of those instruments. The value of these outstanding products is increased with the concept that HAENNI has for each different application that may vary according to the country, legislation, weather, infrastructure, drivers’ behaviours and funds available.
In short, one of the cheapest and most efficient solutions to drastically minimize the deterioration of the road network is to change the behaviour of the drivers by raising the awareness of the problem with a mobile weight enforcement.