CALGARY, Alta. – An Alberta task force is hoping that its new truck-driver training rules will lower the number of highway accidents involving heavy trucks.

Crashes involving transports on the province’s highways last year killed 48 and injured 606, according to figures released in October.

“The bar has to be raised,” said Alberta Infrastructure executive director of vehicle safety Roger Clarke. Only about 10 per cent of the province’s 26,000 registered truckers have formal training, local media reports.

The task force, which is made up of government and industry officials and has spent two years and $500,000 developing the training program, will report to the Klein government in December.

The government will then decide if the program will become mandatory. The proposed program would become the standard at all provincial training schools. Students would take 12 weeks of classroom instruction and up to 40 weeks of driver training in a mentorship program. Under current Alberta law, a would-be truck driver needs only to pass a Class 1 licence test. n