THUNDER BAY — Improving driver training and licensing for transport drivers, bettering roadside facilities across northern Ontario and upgrading the highways themselves are several ways the Ontario Trucking Association and transport industry safety advocates say can help reduce collisions on northern highways.
Highway safety across northern Ontario has been raised several times as an issue during the ongoing Ontario election campaign. Here in the Northwest, there have been a number of collisions and other incidents involving transports this winter alone, with at least three resulting in death.
Additionally, data from Ontario Provincial Police shows that “commercial motor vehicles” were involved in 60 per cent of fatal collisions in Northwestern Ontario last year, however that definition includes other large trucks as well as transports.
“I think there's a lot of attention on the driver training schools,” said Geoff Wood, the senior vice president of policy with the Ontario Trucking Association. “I'm not sure where (oversight officials are) at in the process in terms of ramping up there, but that's something we think — not just us but a whole host of other … like-minded safety groups in the trucking space — think needs to happen.”
Changing the licensing requirements to drive transports, including requiring licences for different configurations of vehicles based on size, weight and commodities hauled, is also something the OTA is pushing for.
“It's important in our mind that the future licensing state take that into consideration and hence, that improves road safety, (and) gives the drivers much more time in a practical setting.”
The organization, Wood said, is taking part in an ongoing Ministry of Transportation review of commercial truck driver training “which we think is fantastic.”
Last year, the OTA released results of a survey they did of 680 drivers, particularly ones who operate on Highways 11 and 17 in northern Ontario, about what their concerns and proposed solutions were. “Unsafe passing by other vehicles” was the concern most identified, followed shortly by lack of rest areas, poorly trained drivers and a lack of safe passing areas.
For Jeff Orr, a transport driver for the past 25-plus years and a co-founder of the Truckers for Safer Highways safety advocacy group, he said he’s noticed an overall deterioration in highway safety over the course of his career. “It has changed,” he said. “It's gotten worse.”
Orr told Newswatch that he’s noticed a decline in commercial vehicle enforcement, and that facilities like inspection stations, aren’t open and operational as much — meaning less oversight of drivers. “At one time the scales were manned pretty regularly,” Orr said. “Now I can drive across Ontario and I don't worry about getting pulled into a scale.”
Orr also said he believes that driver training and the oversight of the schools that do it needs to improve.
As for the highways themselves, both organizations say there’s a lot of room for improvement in northern Ontario.
The OTA’s survey of truck drivers identified adding more truck passing and climbing lanes to northern Ontario highways as the top solution.
“They need to do a lot (for) infrastructure as far as the highways in northern Ontario — I mean we're years and years and years behind the U.S., right?” Orr, with the Truckers for Safer Highways organization, said. “They have an Interstate system all across their country and our main artery is a two-lane highway across Ontario.”
And given that drivers have mandatory limits for how much time they can log behind the wheel over a given period, Wood, at the Ontario Trucking Association, said that ensuring a proper distribution of rest stops and filling in infrastructure gaps across the region is essential for driver safety.
“The ability for them to find safe parking to meet their regulatory obligations is critical,” he said, adding that the MTO, in his estimation, is undertaking a “very aggressive plan” to fill those gaps, and he encourages it to continue.