Opinion: Keeping drivers on the right track with Operation Tramline

By Mark Cartwright, head of commercial vehicle incident prevention at National Highways and lead of Driving for Better Business

Three unmarked National Highways HGV cabs patrol our motorways and A roads, watching for dangerous driving behaviour and acting as a deterrent to create a safer road network. 

Operation Tramline is a road safety initiative which has enables police forces to identify dangerous driving behaviours and educate thousands of drivers across the UK about risky behaviours on the strategic road network.  

The three unmarked HGV cabs are part of National Highways mission to reduce accidents and to halve the number of people killed or seriously injured on the strategic road network by 2025. National Highways teams and road policing units are equally passionate about achieving this goal. 

The unmarked DAF tractor units are loaned to roads policing bodies across England and Wales, to monitor motorways and A roads for dangerous driving behaviours such as mobile device use, a lack of seat belts, or distracted driving.  

There’s a minority view out there that activities such as this are ‘sneaky’ and ‘revenue raising’, and that ‘police should be targeting the real criminals’.

Police say drivers wouldn’t take these risks if they could see what the police see. Success for them is seeing no one taking risks while they drive.

Operation Tramline’s success 

During its 1,600 days of operation, police forces across the country have identified numerous instances of dangerous driving including: 

• 10,300 drivers manually interacting with mobile phones  
• 11,900 not wearing seatbelts 
• 2,500 not in proper control of the vehicle 
• 1,500 insecure loads 
• 3,100 vehicles which were not roadworthy 
• 1,400 drivers’ hours offences 

What has emerged is that risk-taking behaviours come in clusters: An unfastened seatbelt brought the driver of a flatbed truck to the attention of North Yorkshire Police Tramline team.

However, as the cab kept him under surveillance until a response car could intercept, the flatbed driver wove in and out of traffic at high speed on the A19.

When the pick-up was finally stopped, it transpired the driver had 10 points on his licence and no road tax. He was hoping to start a transport business. 

In the five years since Operation Tramline started, its popularity with road policing units has grown. 

To date 35 of the UK’s 45 police forces have used Tramline cabs on their sections of the strategic road network.

The police forces pay for the fuel and the personnel to operate the cabs, while National Highways funds the vehicles. We share the location of the cabs on social media. 

The more drivers we can educate the better, and hopefully their fleets will then continue that education – but this does rely on word of mouth between drivers, as GDPR rules prevent police forces sharing the details of any penalties with employers or the Traffic Commissioner. 

This makes it doubly important that employers check driving licences regularly and use technology solutions such as telematics to keep track of driving style and behaviour, otherwise a driver could be penalised or even summoned to court for dangerous driving and the employer know nothing about it.

That is a sobering thought given that employers have a duty of care to their drivers and the public.