Road safety: speed limitation devices for commercial motor vehicles (amend. Directive 92/6/EEC)

The committee adopted the report by Kostas HATZIDAKIS (EPP-ED, GR) broadly approving the proposal under the codecision procedure (1st reading), subject to a number of technical amendments designed mainly to clarify the text. Some of these amendments added new provisions to the proposal. For instance, the committee wanted Member States to be allowed to impose or maintain stricter speed restrictions in the case of national transport operations involving hazardous goods. Another amendment stipulated that, as speed limitation devices made overtaking slower and therefore more dangerous, the Commission should look into the possibility of allowing the maximum speed to be exceeded on a strictly time-limited basis when slow vehicles were being overtaken. Furthermore, Member States should have until 1 January 2004 to transpose the directive into national law, rather than the deadline of 1 January 2003 proposed by the Commission. Finally, the Commission was called on to publish a study, 18 months after the directive entered into force, on the possiblities of introducing intelligent speed adaptation (ISA).�