Stop hitting emergency vehicles and overpasses, it’s not professional!
February was not a good month to be a fire truck, an emergency response vehicle, or an overpass.
Bear with me while I describe these for some truck drivers who keep slamming into them. Repeatedly!
Fire trucks are bright red and festooned with flashing lights, and emergency response vehicles are brightly painted with well-lit message boards. Overpasses are the structures you drive under and have their heights listed on the side of the road before you approach them. They will likely hurt you if you drive into them.
A firefighter from central Ontario was lucky to escape without injury after a driver drove their truck into his fire truck while he was protecting emergency workers on Highway 401.
The fire truck’s lights were activated, and the highway had been shut down. Emergency services were at the scene of an earlier multi-vehicle collision in the early hours of the morning.
The trucker drove on the shoulder of the highway before slamming into fire truck. Yes, drove on the shoulder of a closed highway and crashed into a parked vehicle with flashing lights.
“I beg you, please slow down,” was the plea from Dave Dawson, fire chief of Alnwick/Haldimand Township to transport truck drivers.
And this is not the first time a fire apparatus has been struck on Highway 401 in Northumberland County in February.
Earlier, a transport truck struck a Cobourg Fire Department pumper on Highway 401 sending one firefighter to hospital with minor injuries.
Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) emergency response workers put themselves in harm’s way to help road users in trouble. It does not help when drivers don’t pay attention and crash into the trucks they drive.
Two MTO blocker trucks were in live lanes of traffic on Highway 401 protecting a collision scene ahead at about 2 a.m. one Sunday morning.
A four-wheeler crashed into them. One truck was unoccupied, the driver of the other escaped injury. The three occupants in the four-wheeler were hospitalized.
Police had to remind people to “pay attention when you see flashing lights.”
Truck drivers did not spare overpasses either. Three drivers drove their big rigs into them in British Columbia. A driver hauling a raised trailer joined the mayhem hitting an overpass in Ontario.
The problem is so serious in B.C. that government has a website that lists overpass crashes and provides information on the trucking company involved, cause of incident and enforcement carried out.
Last year there were 29 such incidents in the province. That’s a lot of truck drivers either distracted, not paying attention or not adhering to routes for oversized loads. They may have not been using a truck GPS. Or maybe they just didn’t give a damn.
Truckers are supposed to be professional drivers, and most are. Why do fire and police officials have to plead for people to pay attention and slow down when commonsense should suffice?
And what do we do with the few truck drivers who are reckless, indifferent or just plain stupid? These are not professionals; they are a menace.
Yes, I called them stupid. And so did Mike Farnworth, B.C. minister of transportation.
“You really have to question what kind of stupidity is it in terms of not making sure that you are following the prescribed route,” he told Global News.
A carrier’s name is present on the truck and sometimes the trailer too. It’s a public relations nightmare once pictures of equipment involved in such incidents start making the rounds on social media.
Thankfully no one lost their life in the February incidents although a lot of equipment and infrastructure took a proper beating.
Talk to your drivers and keep drilling in the safety message. You may not be able to cure stupid. It would be best to part ways with such folks. But you might help dispel complacency, and everyone gets to go home to their loved ones.
Have your say
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Yes, stupid is the correct name for the carnage. Penalties are not severe enough and our highway monitoring is lacking. Scales are closed far too much and the stupid carriers know it. The carriers with great reputations suffer from the offensive behavior of the stupid carriers.
We have so many poorly managed trucking companies in Canada these days.
Shippers who hire these Lunch Bucket Truckers should be charged.
We have fewer good fleets every year it shouldn’t be hard to find them.
Canada needs an overhaul, they will give anybody a drivers licence. This new driver just landed 3 months ago, been riding a bicycle until he left for Canada. Now he’s driving cross country in a tractor trailer with a GPS and automated transmission. And you all wonder why 11/17 is a freaking killing field, AB, BC the same thing. Why does Hiway Thru Hell, now blur out the drivers faces???. The Ontario Government and their U.S. supplier DriveTest should be sued for selling licenses, dereliction of duty and so on.
You can’t fully even blame the driver.
– who hired this driver
– who trained this driver
– does his/her driver file show the driver was trained.
– who manages this fleet
– who hires this fleet
There is more blame to spread around that doesn’t
involve the driver.
Roy
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You are correct
I’m lost for words but if you can’t see all the flashing lights up ahead then you shouldn’t be driving. For the driver that went onto the shoulder and hit the fire truck straight to jail, no excuse for this BS.
This brings an idea to mind, What if all across Canada, every bridge/overpass below 13.6 Feet/ 4.15M were painted red, not the entire bridge/overpass but the outer edge, could or would a simple solution like this work? Instead of adding yet another piece of electronic sensor that can malfunction and costs companies more money.
Mr Barros: I know this is a bit long, but I hope you will read it. It’s my RANT on today’s trucking culture from my 61yrs experience.
Ontario NEEDS to get back to following the HTA to the letter for ALL vehicles. The courts need to be told that the only LAW is the HTA, not 57 shades of grey like a lot of the accused attorney’s spew.
Courts need to be ORDERED to follow the HTA and the penalty’s need to be significantly
increased. (4-5x’s)
Speeding 10-15 over, running red lites or stop sticks, illegal passing (in intersections; on double solid lines) etc, if caught on a LEO’s camera, should not be allowed to challenge this in court. Your guilty, pay the fine, do the time. This would significantly free up the judicial system for major charges and save a massive amount of tax money. I was a trucker for 61 yrs (retired Feb 5/25; 53yr OTR; 5.3mil mi) and have seen respect for the law and social morals decrease drastically. Any carrier I’ve been attached to in the last 15yr has adamantly refused to host a safety meeting, stating that you drivers now how to drive, you don’t need training. Yet within 3-4 wks they show up at the office with a $100,000 SUV or Pickup. (Greed). No wonder there was no meeting. It cuts into their lifestyle.
The driving behavior became worse when Dalton McGinty was Premier and said that everybody was driving at 110 to125km so we won’t charge them because it’s the new normal. During those 8 yrs, the highways became a WILD WEST show. Wynn didn’t change it and neither has Ford and it keeps getting worse. How many people have to die needlessly before change is enforced??
Truck driver training – what training? 103 hr is a sick joke. How about an apprenticeship of 2,000 hrs. There is an intelligent way to do this if bribery to bureaucrats and MPP’s were considered a crime, not a perk. Govt officials would soon work up an apprenticeship that works. Welders, electricians etc need up to 5,000hrs to become certified. A hairdresser needs 2,000 plus hrs, including school to be certified. When was the last time a failed hairdo got someone killed? Canada and the US turns drivers loose with little to no training in a 50,000 to 140,000 lb rig on congested roads, all because of carriers, shippers and manufactures greed. Using the lame excuse (an excuse is the shell of the truth, stuffed with a lie) that it will cost the consumer more money to purchase goods is Total Bollocks. It’s a LIE that the ‘C’ suite uses to protect their bloated salary and managerial bonuses. But the same carriers and shippers don’t have a problem paying a computer geek $150.00 dollars per hr to upgrade or fix a glitch and then complain they are paying their drivers to much at $29.00/hr.
In the early ’70’s I had a trainer/mentor for my first yr. We had uniforms. If you didn’t come to work with the uniform, you were sent home. The 2nd time you were let go. Today’s dress code is pure trashy. Is it any wonder we aren’t respected. Most drivers don’t respect themselves.
Canada and the U.S. DOES NOT HAVE A DRIVER SHORTAGE! We do however have a Carrier Shortage with morals and respect for QUALIFIED drivers who expect to be well compensated. The same carriers just want seat warmers from the Mid-East. CHEAP! And if they can scam them into paying them, the carrier, for their work visa permit, then a fatter pocket for the Pres. and CEO.
I miss the road already, 4 wks, but I’m glad I’m off it. With the shit show I’ve endured over the last 15-20 yrs, if it hadn’t been for my skill, (’70’s training) and defensive driving, my wife would be a widow.
I’d really like to find some people to work with me (with a spine) to change this and get back to SAFETY and BASICS. If the rules were enforced we could save over 500mil $ per yr in lost time, claims etc. and make the trucking industry a place where the younger generation would be happy to take the reins from us old boys.
Phone is the best way to contact me, if you so choose.
DG Wanless
Wasaga beach
705-333-3030.
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Well said they should put you in charge of a new safety program for ont
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Great Observation and Solution!
People are dying senselessly!
The mayor of Schreiber and the young mother and daughter near Winnipeg should be remembered as well as Humboldt!
Thank you Leo. We can fix this and the regulations are all in place to do so. I no longer own my own trucks or drive transport for a living but I earned my stripes years ago and can speak from experience. Now I commute 40 kms every day with much of it on a very busy stretch of the 401. Every day I see transport drivers and 4 wheeler drivers busy keying away on their phones with their eyes off the road. Accountability, true commitment to safety and ensuring that no matter what a drivers origin is they are properly trained and supported with real rewards for companies that do this and real consequences for those that don’t from all of our governing bodies and associations is the only way this will change.
This is what happens when you allow foreign, unqualified drivers on our roads. It is no surprise that the rise in “stupid”, truck involved incidents has risen in step with the amount of “new” truck drivers; as such you would think that the powers that be should enforce things like mandatory, on-road testing for all newcomers before being allowed on our roads.
The amount of flippy-flop wearing, barely-english speaking drivers I have seen in my travels is frankly shocking. I can get a ticket for driving 10KMH over the speed limit in a 50KMH zone, but these folks are allowed to drive large vehicles, unsafely, on major highways; the only time any law enforcement is involved is after the fact.
I agree training needs to better and some truck drivers need to slow down in emergency zones. But we better lights at lower overpasses
We need stop companies that self insure and give new drivers permit that either not understand or not care