It’s time to admit trucking has a safety problem

It’s a difficult topic to address, but we can’t fix a problem unless we acknowledge it’s broken. Truck safety in Ontario, and other parts of Canada, is getting worse, not better.

You see evidence of it in the news nearly every day. Another commute disrupted by a truck wreck. And in the police reports, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), publicly expressing concern about the increasing number of truck crashes on the roads it patrols.

And the eye test doesn’t lie. You see it on your way to work, and on the way home. You hear it from professional drivers who dread certain trips, particularly through Northern Ontario. Look at surveys of truck drivers, including this month’s Pulse Survey (look for it in the April edition), and a recently conducted survey by the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA).

They’re crying for help. No one wants to go to work thinking they’re taking their life in their hands, or worse, putting their lives in the hands of other road users they no longer feel they can trust. Eighty per cent of responding truck drivers in that OTA survey said they felt poorly trained truck drivers are a major concern, and that actually was the third biggest concern expressed, behind unsafe passing and lack of rest areas.

Lots of blame

There’s lots of blame to go around.

Let’s start with training. Mandatory entry-level training (MELT), implemented beyond Ontario in the wake of the tragic Humboldt Bronco’s bus crash, heightened the training requirements for new drivers. But there’s a glaring loophole in the form of lack of oversight. We simply don’t have enough policing of the training schools to ensure they’re all following the MELT curriculum.

There are still too many bad training institutions allowed to operate with impunity, training new drivers on how to obtain a Class 1 or A/Z licence, and not how to be professional truck drivers.

Then there’s the fleets that hire these drivers and turn them loose without adequate finishing programs. I hate to go back to picking on Chohan Freight Forwarders, the infamous fleet with a propensity for hitting B.C. bridges. But in a lawsuit against the province of B.C., seeking to have its operating authority restored, the company blamed an owner-operator for its most recent bridge strike, and claimed to have fired that individual, washing its hands of blame.

Where’s the accountability in that? ‘Blame the lease-op’ isn’t a safety strategy.

Insurance too easy?

How are some of these companies getting insurance? The insurance industry is our last line of defence, and are supposed experts at risk management. We hear anecdotally some of these poorly run trucking companies are relying on Facility Association insurance, and some even registered their trucks in lower-cost regions of Canada instead of where those trucks are actually domiciled.

We need to crack down on loopholes so unsafe carriers find themselves unable to operate. Maybe Facility Association insurance should be overhauled? Maybe it’s a conversation worth having?

Personally, the most frustrating piece in all of this is that we push back against safety technologies that are proven to help make trucking safer. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that include features such as lane keep assist and automatic emergency braking are proven to prevent wrecks.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, ADAS reduces the risk of a front-end collision by 82-92%. These technologies have evolved over time, and the cost is more palatable as their take rate increases. Eventually they’ll be mandated, because their effectiveness has become too well proven to ignore.

Let’s get these systems onto more trucks before waiting for government to force our hands.

I’ve just thrown a lot of shade from atop my soapbox, and it’s only fair to take a long hard look in the mirror. What more can we be doing to contribute to greater truck safety? To that end, look for more driver-oriented educational and how-to articles in Today’s Trucking and TruckNews.com.

Many will be written by Jim Park, who’s been around the block once or twice, or a million miles or so, and has the street cred to write such pieces drawing on his personal experience behind the wheel.

We can’t afford to do nothing. But the first step is admitting we have a problem.