Munich/Kassel (dpa/lhe) - According to an ADAC test, trucks parked incorrectly at motorway service areas are "rather the rule" at night. The car club counted how many trucks were parked incorrectly between 10 p.m. and midnight at 96 rest areas in 14 federal states. The result: "90 percent of trucks park in absolute no parking spaces due to a lack of parking space." The testers found the most illegal parkers at the Kassel Ost Lohfelden service area (A7) with ten trucks parked at high risk.
Because more than 20,000 parking spaces were missing, truck drivers had to look for alternatives night after night - the result was sometimes a "big safety risk", warned the ADAC on Tuesday. At every second facility, "high-risk parking" is carried out, for example in the entrance or exit area or on the hard shoulder of the motorway.
At 86 of the 96 rest areas, trucks were therefore absolutely forbidden to stop or in unauthorized parking areas, for example for cars. Parking outside of marked areas, for example in the lanes between the parking spaces, "was then almost the rule": The testers only saw a single area - Lüneburg Heath West on the A7 in Lower Saxony - not a wrongly parked truck. "Two facilities were parked in such a way that they could not be counted because the tester could not even find a way to park his car."
In Wildeshausen North (A1, Lower Saxony) up to eight trucks were in the "red" danger zone. In addition to the Lüneburger Heide West service area, Fliegwiese West (A5, Baden-Württemberg), Bönningstedt West (A7, Schleswig-Holstein) and Plater Berge West (A14, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) also attracted positive attention.
Austria and Italy fought illegal parking with video surveillance at rest areas and draconian penalties. In Germany, on the other hand, truck drivers paid only 35 euros for parking in the absolute no-stopping zone at best.
