Reports by drivers that they have been gassed while sleeping in their cabs, allowing criminal gangs to steal their loads have become more common in the past year, reveals TruckPol.
But the specialist road freight crime unit says that so little research has been done into the subject that it is unclear what gas is being used.
The most popular candidate for the gas used is diethyl ether, the chemical used in products for the easier starting of cold diesel engines. The problem, says
Detective Constable Andy Round, of TruckPol, is that the dose would have to be just right - too little and it would not work, too much and it could kill a driver.
"We are just not convinced that criminals would have the expertise to use the right amount," he says.
One of the difficulties for the police is in establishing if drivers sometimes invent the gassing stories in order to conceal the fact that they slept through a theft, heard it but decided not to get out and confront the thieves, or had even been involved themselves in some way. DC Round says: "I'm not saying that gassings never happen, but we haven't really got any hard evidence that they have and until we do we have to consider all possibilities."
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