It was the 10th joint operation by the Traffic Police, Land Transport Authority and Jurong Inspection Centre held since May to clamp down on the rise of errant drivers of heavy vehicles.

Drivers who got pulled over yesterday earned themselves warnings or summonses on the spot.

One of the luckier ones was cement-mixer driver, Mr Lew, who was stopped at a road block along Tampines Link, a popular road plied by heavy vehicles daily.

An LTA officer who inspected his cement mixer found its brake lights to be faulty and licence plates covered in mud.

'I'll fix it now, I'll fix it now,' he said repeatedly in Malay before being let off with a warning.

He immediately got down to fixing the problem - replacing the brake light bulbs and scrubbing down his licence plates with water - in a neighbouring heavy vehicle wash.

The 54-year-old driver, who has over 20 years of experience driving heavy vehicles, said: 'Luckily they didn't issue me with a summons.'

The Traffic Police's senior staff sergeant Mohd (subs: mohd is in his IC) Fadzil, 34, told The Straits Times: 'Drivers usually say they didn't know when we catch them for not displaying their speed limiter labels or for not carrying a breakdown sign with them.'

'But those caught for speeding usually don't say much because we clock speeds with our laser speed guns. They'll just ask for another chance,' he said.

Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.