About 14 days ago, I was driving in a motorway from Koper to Ljubljana. Cars in the overtaking lane, a column of trucks in the other lane; and if you looked at the number plates, an even bigger disaster - maybe one in 15 trucks with a Slovenian number plate.

 A toll is supposed to be a road wear charge. 20 000 cars do not do as much damage to the road as a properly axle-loaded lorry (if the lorry is too heavy, the damage increases exponentially). So lorries pay significantly too little toll (or the toll for cars is significantly too much).

The government should increase the toll for lorries to the point where it would be cheaper for them to travel by rail. At the same time, SŽ and the government should agree on a more normal price for the transport and it should be regular (depending on the number of trucks, it should be several times a day). This way, all foreign trucks would take the train, and they would not travel from Mb, Lj... to Koper by road.

The positive effects would be at least as follows:

- the lifetime of the roads would be considerably extended and in the long run, substantially less money would be needed for road repairs

-substantially fewer exhaust fumes

-improved road safety (how many times does a lorry overtake another lorry on the motorway because the lorry is 5 km/h faster, thus causing a traffic jam in the overtaking lane and thus the possibility of a collision)

-huge financial incentive for the SŽ (no need to bail out taxpayers' money to keep them in existence)

-truck drivers could rest during the time the truck is on the train; the law stipulates that they must rest for 45 min per 4.5 hour journey. This would increase road safety and at the same time allow them to travel across our country even on a Sunday, when there is a driving ban for lorries.

- increasing the toll would do little to curb the flood of imported (poor quality) food, which would stimulate the sale of domestic food and thus increase domestic self-sufficiency (currently in a disastrous state) and also the food industry