Automatic weighing stations will be built on national highways, especially roads with heavy traffic of overloaded vehicles. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Transport has called for expanding the use of automatic weighing stations on national highways, prioritising roads with many overloaded vehicles.

After six months of piloting the installation of an automatic weighing system on Highway 5, experts from the transport ministry said high-speed automatic weighing technology helped control and reduce the number of overloaded vehicles on the road.

The experts also said the automatic weighing minimised corruption in the process of punishing overloaded vehicle’ drivers.

Nguyễn Văn Huyện, General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Việt Nam (DRVN), under the ministry, said the automatic weighing system has monitored 100 per cent of the number of vehicles using the road.

“The software is controlled by many units, so there is no human intervention in the result of handling violations,” he said.

He said that after evaluating the pilot results, DRVN would complete procedures for expanding the use of automatic weighing stations on national highways and major cities and provinces.

“We will prioritise key highways with a large number of overloaded vehicles such as the provinces of Ninh Binh, Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, the gateways in and out to Hà Nội,” he said.

DRVN reported that after six months of piloting the automatic weighing system on National Highway 5 (from August 15, 2020, to February 14, 2021), it found 663 of the 466,782 vehicles were overloaded with goods.

At the National Traffic Safety Committee’s online conference on April 9, Deputy Prime Minister Trương Hòa Bình said overloaded vehicles were leading to degraded roads in many localities.

He said vehicles carrying overloaded goods on road was an act of destroying national property, which should be handled seriously. — VNS