OPP concerned about truck crash rates
ORILLIA, Ont. – The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) report fatal transport truck collisions are up 38% this year, with an increase in four of the six regions it monitors.
The Northeast region has seen an 800% increase. The OPP said it has responded to 33 truck-related fatal collisions, including 41 fatalities.
“The OPP has never been more committed to its Commercial Motor Vehicle Collision Mitigation Strategy,” said commissioner Vince Hawkes. “We continue to work diligently with our road safety and trucking industry partners toward our goal of reducing the number of transport truck collisions on our roads. Despite our efforts, it takes a firm commitment to safe driving on the part of all transport truck drivers and other motorists in order to see a significant reduction in these types of collisions.”
Operation Safe Trucking will see the OPP target speeding and other forms of aggressive and distracted driving. It will also be monitoring hours-of-service and equipment violations.
The OPP says it has investigated more than 3,600 transport truck-related collisions this year, representing 11% of all collisions. It has spent nearly 4,300 hours inspecting trucks and has taken 658 trucks out of service so far this year. It has laid more than 1,615 speeding charges, 354 distracted driving charges and 963 defective equipment-related charges against truck drivers.
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I guess speed limiters aren’t doing the job? No surprise there….automatic transmissions and warning systems so no skill needed… Too many electronic distractions, log books included…too much of the “me” and “me first ” mentality….too many conficting life experiences and traditions from other cultures….but we can fix all this by controlling the masses with speed limiters and e logs. Guess that’s not working all that well…
While I personally commend the provincial, regional and municipal police for their dedication and hard work in the area of truck safety and I can’t even imagine just how much worse things might be if not for their collective effort. My apologies also to those truck drivers who do not operate using “high risk” methods that endanger the motoring public and who represent themselves and their employers professionally out on the road.
I think that everyone is able to understand and easily relate to how excessive speed can contribute to truck related collisions. A fully loaded tractor-trailer driving well above the posted speed limit poses a clear and present danger to the public. Also, and just as risky is the truck driver who is attempting to operate his truck at or even closer to the posted speed limit, while either the traffic, whether and/or roadway conditions would simply render any attempt to get “up-to-speed” a very dangerous proposition!
Notwithstanding the obvious concern for speed and distracted driving and other forms of aggressive driving behaviours that seem more prevalent these days amongst commercial drivers, I am very curious as to how many charges were laid against truck drivers over this same period for violating Section 158(2) of the Highway Traffic Act., which reads as follows; “The driver of a commercial motor vehicle when driving on a highway at a speed exceeding 60 kilometres per hour shall not follow within 60 metres of another motor vehicle, but this shall not be construed to prevent a commercial motor vehicle overtaking and passing another motor vehicle”. We’re only talking approximately 200 feet here! We all know that a tractor trailer (in ideal weather and roadway conditions) needs something in the area of 500+ feet to stop safely! Yet, all one really needs to do is view the truck traffic at any spot along the 401 corridor between Windsor and Cornwall and watch as trucks routinely get up to within a car length between their own front bumper and the back bumper of the car or truck that they are following.
It is my sincere opinion that this is at least as concerning for the public as speed and even distracted driving is. More often than not, a truck driver who operates under this extremely tight and dangerous formation at highway speeds is going to encounter more than his/her fair share of near misses, (if the rest of us are lucky) or rear-end or lane change type collisions. When traffic slows, and sometimes it slows down faster than the driver can anticipate, the truck has nowhere to go except into the back of the vehicle in front of it, or into the vehicle that is on one side of the truck or the other as it veers into a lane in a last ditch effort to avert the imminent rear-end impact!
I would propose aggressive, routine, ongoing daily and nightly, 7 day a week, 24 hour a day enforcement of this kind of tailgating activity, not unlike the daily enforcement of all forms of truck safety related issues that the law enforcement professionals carry out each day. I believe that only using the occasional pre-announced blitz method of clamping down on this extremely dangerous practice of tail gating, lets the bad drivers / operators off the hook and taints the entire industry as aggressors.
With numbers like these i’m sure the Minsitry wants to get to the root of the problem thats has been a plague on the trucking industry for the last 20 yrs, DRIVETEST. A commercial truck driver is only as good as the training they recieved ,but it is ultimately the examiner conducting the licensing road test that decides if a driver has the skill and ability to safely handle a fully loaded tractor trailer and all to often un-qualified drivers are being issued az licenses . The ministry needs to take back driver testing. You can NEVER privatize safety.
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Drivetest is a plague the staff are poorly trained and profit is put ahead of safety.
E logs are making it much worse as truck drivers race the clock in the past 3 months as truck drivers has seen their pay drop and walmart increased late fees. Truck driver pay and treatment would do more to reduce accidents than anything else. The O.T.A. needs to look out for truck drivers and work with the receivers rules that they must pay for unloading time. The O.T.A. needs to push for parking before these new rules come to Canada on E logs.
How many of those “33 truck-related fatal collisions” were the fault of the commercial truck?
If the accidents are the fault of commercial vehicles, then so be it, but at least have the good sense to report the context as well as the sensationalistic headline. Any fool can regurgitate facts and figures, but it takes a true reporter to be able to make sense of them.
Have the honesty and decency to call a spade a spade. At least that way carriers and commercial drivers, the ones that read your magazine, and not the car drivers and CTV News that do not read it, will be able to reliably and confidently look inwards on themselves to help mitigate the issue(s), rather than calling your literary excursion the “#fakenews” that it is.
As an industry trade magazine Trucks News would do well to remember what side its bread is buttered on, and be a service to the industry rather than a hindrance.