“There’s clearly an issue about monitoring,” said Provincial Judge Sean Dunnigan after Crown prosecutor Deanna Smyth detailed the multiple violations under federal and provincial transportation regulations which were not complied with by Adesh Deol Trucking, leading up to the tragic Humboldt bus collision.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance strongly agrees with Judge Dunnigan and has been calling for improved entry standards and oversight in the trucking industry.
“While the vast majority of companies go above and beyond in meeting National Safety Code standards through their own progressive safety management systems, policies and corrective oversight, a small percentage of carriers lack the knowledge and preparedness to meet basic standards, says CTA Chair Scott Smith.
To address the potential details of how to focus attention on the few bad apples, CTA has established the Truck Safety Working Group made up of leading trucking industry representatives from coast-to-coast as well as Transport Canada. The Truck Safety Working Group was created to promote CTA’s 10-point action plan, which provides policy makers some direction on how government and industry can work together on improving truck safety compliance.
In the meantime, the CTA Board is calling on the federal government to quickly introduce electronic technology that will eliminate the paper compliance system governing the time a driver can operate on a public roadway. Paper logbook violations were central among the charges against the truck driver and the company in the Humboldt case.
“Moving quickly on implementing tamper-proof, electronic logging devices (ELDs) to replace archaic paper logs to effectively monitor hours of service compliance is a good example of the technology our industry is calling for that would improve monitoring and oversight in our sector. This system needs to be implemented and enforced as quickly as possible so that hours of service violations associated with the Adesh Deol case can be eliminated,” said Stephen Laskowski, president, CTA.
According to Transport Canada, fatigue in both truck and passenger car drivers is a factor in about 20 per cent of all collisions. There are about 9,400 HOS-related per year in Canada and the introduction of tamper-proof, certified ELDs will significantly improve compliance.