Facebook advocacy group calling for better standards to improve trucking industry
A Facebook group is pushing the federal and provincial governments to get involved and help vastly improve safety in the trucking industry.
Truckers For Safer Highways co-founder, Travis McDougall, says safety standards in the industry have plummeted and crashes involving commercial vehicles are skyrocketing. McDougall, an Arthur native who now lives in Kitchener driving long-haul out of the GTA, says he and his group have become increasingly concerned with how many preventable crashes are occurring around the country involving commercial vehicles and trucks. Two major areas of concern for the group, McDougall says, are substandard training and a lack of inspectors.
“After the Humboldt Broncos collision, there was a big call for change, in training. Ontario had just implemented the M.E.L.T. (Mandatory Entry Level Training) program, which, from all reports that we’ve heard from drivers that have participated in it, it has been really no improvement.”
Crashes involving commercial vehicles are increasing at what McDougall calls “alarming rates.” He says already this year, Canada is approaching almost 500 collisions involving commercial vehicles, and it’s January. Training, or potential lack thereof, is critical according to McDougall and his group, with carriers being able to train and license their own drivers in-house. He says that creates a poor incentive to train thoroughly and properly, with carriers benefitting from getting drivers on the road as soon as possible. McDougall says he understands the need for drivers, with constant shortages in the industry, but that shouldn’t be a reason to quickly shuffle drivers into situations they aren’t ready for.
“What we’re finding is, it’s not really making a change. A lot of these driving schools are training the drivers to pass the test. It’s very common for an instructor in the driving schools to tell a driver ‘this is what you need to do to pass the test, this is what you need to say or know’ when you’re doing your road test.”
McDougall says there’s a big difference between knowing how to pass the test and actually being ready for the job.
“Being taught how to pass the test is completely different than being a safe operator on a day-to-day basis on the road. Our other thing would be enforcement. Ontario alone is down 38 percent for enforcement officers since 2012. We’re ten years later, wouldn’t it make more sense to have more? We’re seeing more trucks on the road, clearly.”
Additionally, McDougall and his group want the provincial governments across Canada and the federal government to get involved and solve these issues that McDougall says are costing lives when they don’t need to be. So far, he says the federal government hasn’t been very responsive to his group and the industry needs as a whole, but support is building in northern Ontario where many MPPs in that region are starting to support the group and calls for change. But until stricter standards are put in place in terms of training, and more enforcement stations and operators are available to check drivers, things will likely get worse before they get better, McDougall says.
“I hate to make a prediction like this, but I think we’re headed toward another Humboldt Broncos tragedy. That’s the way I see the industry. Don’t get me wrong there’s lots of safe, professional drivers out here, but unfortunately we’re seeing a lot more unsafe drivers. And it’s not all the drivers fault, they’re being sent out and trained and they don’t know what they don’t know about the industry. Not nearly half of what they should be trained to do is being made clear to them. And then we don’t have enforcement officers out here. For instance, I can drive from our yard in the GTA out here to B.C., and I can almost guarantee which scales I’m gonna go through, and that’s a huge tool for the industry, is inspection stations and scale offices. Ontario, on a weekend, I can go through and never see a scale, maybe see one in Manitoba, and then never see another one until B.C.”
For more information, you can visit the Truckers For Safer Highways Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/truckersforsaferhighways. Also, for expanded thoughts on the issues facing the commercial vehicle industry, the full interview with Truckers For Safer Highways co-founder Travis McDougall is available below:
Read original story from Midwestern Ontario News – BlackburnNews.com