Ontario Provincial Police responded to 9,110 transport truck-related crashes in 2022, marking the highest provincial total in more than a decade.
Although the majority of charges were issued to commercial drivers, four-wheeler drivers were also responsible for a number of the collisions.
Of the 2,858 OPP-laid charges in transport truck-involved collisions last year, 1,098 were issued to non-commercial (passenger vehicle) drivers, the police service said in a related press release. The balance were issued to commercial drivers.
(File photo: iStock)
The OPP, collaborating with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO), says it is ramping up enforcement and education around commercial motor vehicle safety, as part of a joint effort to address the upward trend in transport truck-involved collisions.
These incidents, which accounted for 12% of overall collisions last year, resulted in 71 fatalities, the majority of which were preventable, the OPP says. Improper lane changes, following too closely, and speed were the top primary causes in the collisions.
CVSA’s Operation Safe Driver Week
The news comes as the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) marks the beginning of Operation Safe Driver Week, a North American driver safety traffic enforcement initiative that runs July 9-15.
Officers, troopers and inspectors will focus on passenger and commercial vehicles alike.
Law enforcement personnel will be watching for individuals who are speeding, driving aggressively, ignoring roadway signs, using a handheld device, intoxicated, and driving distracted. Drivers engaging in such behaviors will be pulled over by law enforcement and given a warning or issued a ticket.
This year Operation Safe Driver Week will include a special focus on speeding because it continues to be a major factor in traffic deaths and injuries.
Speeding
Speeding/driving too fast accounted for 25.3% of all fatal roadway crashes in Canada in 2020, CVSA said in a news release. In the U.S., there were 11,258 fatal crashes in which at least one driver was speeding, accounting for 29% of all traffic fatalities. In Mexico, 16.4% of road crashes on the federal highway network were attributed to excessive speed.
The CVSA said the top driver-related factors in fatal crashes involving commercial motor vehicles were speeding, impairment, and distraction/inattention.
