TORONTO — Ontario’s Transportation Minister introduced legislation that if passed will cap the speed of commercial trucks at 105 km/h by making speed limiters mandatory.

Jim Bradley’s legislation would require the electronically controlled speed limiter to be active on all big rigs operating into, out of and within the province. A speed limiter microchip that has been installed on virtually every new heavy truck engine built since the mid-1990s.

Nearly two and a half years ago the Ontario Trucking Association proposed the idea of mandating the activation of speed limiters on heavy trucks. The argument for speed limiters has been twofold: safer highways and cleaner air.

Trucks traveling in Ontario may not need
to worry about the speedometer in the near
future if speed limiter legislation passes.

Whether or not speed limiters will make good on both those claims has been widely debated, but those are the reasons the minister stuck with while pushing the legislation forward.

“Slowing down big rigs on our highways would make our air cleaner and keep traffic moving at a safe speed. Speed limiters are another step in working together to build a cleaner, greener and stronger province,” says Minister Bradley.

Naturally, the OTA welcomed the news of the legislation moving forward.

“It just makes sense,” says David Bradley, president of the OTA. “Not only is there a direct relationship between speed and the severity of crashes, but there is a direct payback in improved fuel efficiency from operating at lower speeds and that in turn reduces costs and GHG emissions.”

Speed limiter supporters estimate the legislation will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 280,000 tons – the equivalent of taking 2,700 tractor-trailers off the road every year – and a savings of 100 million litres of diesel per year.

The issue has been dividing the trucking industry for the past three years. Essentially, on the pro side you have a robust coalition that includes each provincial trucking association, insurance companies, highway enforcement and safety groups.

Standing against the proposal is the Owner-Operator Business Association of Canada (OBAC), which is backed by powerful Missouri-based OOIDA. Anecdotally, it’s safe to say that many independent operators would like nothing better than to see the idea go away.

Drivers and owner-ops aren’t the only opponents, however. The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada has also spent the last few years urging the MTO to scrap speed limiters. Like the leadership of OBAC and OOIDA, PMTC president Bruce Richards argues that law enforcement should step up their efforts against problem drivers and leave good truckers alone, since the large majority of speeding vehicles on the road are not commercial trucks.

Ontario may not be alone either. At one point Quebec looked like it would be the first province to get out of the gate with speed limiter legislation. But after tabling a motion earlier this year, the government held back, saying it didn’t want to put itself on an island and preferred to wait until Ontario passed the rule first.

Today’s move is sure to light a fire in the legislative halls of Quebec City, but whether La Belle Province is the next to jump on the bandwagon remains to be seen.

“This project has been initiated by Ontario and Quebec adopted the law first. The faster the other provinces will move, the faster the law will be applied in Quebec. It is important to have as many provinces as possible joining the band and now, a major province made a step further,” Marc Cadieux, president of Quebec Trucking Association told us this afternoon.

Though, pro-limiter truckers like Robert Transport boss Claude Robert — a high-ranking Canadian Trucking Alliance official and staunch supporter of mandatory speed limiters — probably want to see the process move a little faster. He was vocally disappointed when Quebec backpedaled slightly.

“Since when do you ask your neighbor to shovel his driveway before you clean yours?” he told Today’s Trucking at the time.

The Ontario legislation will ask for an educational enforcement period of six months before speed limiters were made mandatory, targeted for 2009.