LANGLEY, B.C. — The B.C. Trucking Association (BCTA) is taking a stand for the trucking industry against the mainstream media, for an article the association viewed as biased.

BCTA president and CEO Paul Landry responded to an article entitled “Is the next truck tragedy waiting around the corner?” calling for more accurate and unbiased reporting. The story was published Jan. 20 in The Province, which is one of Vancouver’s daily newspapers.

The article, written by Province staff reporter Cheryl Chan, used negative statistics on commercial-heavy-vehicle crashes to cite “increasing alarm” regarding truck safety in B.C. According to the BCTA the article failed to look at the industry’s record as a whole.

While citing numbers gathered from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the article noted that in 2005, among 28,700 injuries and 460 fatalities from vehicle crashes, heavy commercial vehicles (including buses) accounted for 1,550 injuries and 82 fatalities.

While the ratios themselves wouldn’t be cause for “increasing alarm”, the article did inform readers those accidents with heavy-duty vehicles, “cause a disproportionate amount of harm.”

“Our truck safety record is good and getting better,” noted Landry. “Fatal crashes are a tragedy, whether there is a truck involved or not. And companies guilty of knowingly operating unsafe trucks in violation of regulations should be penalized.”

In a letter to the editor, which was published in The Province on Jan. 22, Landry stated that the article would have presented a more balanced picture of the truck safety record with the inclusion of additional facts, such as: between 1999 and 2005 (the most recent year available), there was a 16.3 percent decrease in the rate of heavy-commercial-vehicle injury and fatal crashes in B.C.; mechanical defects typically account for less than 5 percent of all heavy-commercial-vehicle injury or fatal crashes; and major traffic research studies have concluded that 70 to 80 percent of the time, the truck driver is not at fault in a multi-vehicle fatal collision.

The Province also quoted Landry as an advocate of the “truck jail” concept.

Landry later clarified that BCTA does support the impoundment of grossly substandard trucks that endanger both their drivers and others and create an unfair competitive advantage for unsafe operators who do not spend money on vehicle maintenance.

The association’s proposed impoundment standard focuses on brake adjustment and brake components, tires and steering, as these clearly affect the safety performance of the vehicle. The length of impoundment would vary depending on the number of standard-related offences committed over the year, with a suggested 14-day impoundment plus costs (for towing and repairs after impoundment) for a first offence and escalating for second and greater offences within a given time period.

The impoundment proposal is currently under review by B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon.