CALGARY, Alta. — The Alberta Motor Transport Association (AMTA) has joined its colleagues from across Canada in support of a national policy drafted by the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) calling for the activation of speed limiters.

A similar proposal was put forward by the Ontario Trucking Association to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, which is currently being reviewed. Now with all seven provincial associations in support of the policy, the CTA has put forward a policy to serve as a nationwide effort to have speed limiters activated.

The policy is requesting the provincial government to pass a law making it mandatory that the speed limiters on all trucks that operate into, out of and within Canada be activated and that the maximum speed of trucks should be set at no more than 105 km/h.

“While truck drivers are as a group the country’s safest drivers and the least likely to be excessively speeding, we want to eliminate speeding altogether,” says Mayne Root, executive director of the AMTA.

He says the proposal is bound to be controversial, especially among some truck drivers, “but the environmental and safety benefits are simply too significant to ignore.”

Since the OTA unveiled its plans to push for the mandatory activation of speed limiters, it has received strong opposition from carrier groups within the industry. The Owner-Operator’s Business Association of Canada and its American counterpart the Owner-Operator and Independent Drivers Association have been vocal in their stance that speed limiters will create dangerous speed differentials among traffic, increasing the chance for a collision.

Speed limiter technology, allowing the top speed to be preset, is built in to virtually all trucks manufactured in the last decade. The proposed law would apply not only to all Canadian heavy trucks, but also to U.S. trucks coming into Canada.