German mega truck trials to be massively extended

1 Jul 2010. The German Federal Transport Ministry has announced that the for 2011 planned trials with mega trucks will take place without any criteria being imposed on participants and without any upper limit on amount. The secretary of state with responsibility for logistics, Andreas Scheuer from the coalition government's junior partner CSU, said at a meeting of the Association of Automobile Logistics that not only the limit on the amount of goods would be removed, but that there would also now be no need for companies wanting to take part in the trials to make an application. Scheuer said that companies would simply have to register, according to the magazine Verkehrsrundschau.

Apparently all the safety concerns have been brushed aside by the ministry and it would seem that the fact that these longer vehicles are more difficult to handle is no longer a cause for concern. Numerous studies had concluded that mega trucks are more dangerous than normal HGVs. This fact won't be changed just because the ministry has given them a new name - long HGVs.

A summit of the German state transport ministers in 2007 came out solidly against mega trucks and rejected new trials of the longer vehicles. The federal transport ministry now obviously wants to override that decision in a solo attempt by allowing mass trials with low quality standards and a fig-leaf of obligatory registration.