HALIFAX — Truck enforcement officials in Nova Scotia say they have addressed concerns cited in an Auditor General report released last summer, which blasted the transportation department‘s management of the truck inspection system.

According to CBC, Don Evans, who’s in charge of weigh stations for the province, said changes have been made to keep weigh stations open longer and put more truck inspectors on the road.

Evans and other bureaucrats were called before a committee of the Nova Scotia legislature to testify on the progress they have made since Auditor General Jacques Lapointe’s audit found major inconsistencies between provincial truck weigh scales and that Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (TIR) enforcement staff lacked oversight and inspection guidelines.

The audit found that truck safety enforcement was inadequate "to effectively mitigate the risk of a truck being involved in an accident" and concluded "public safety is being compromised."

One problem cited by Lapointe suggested that predictable patterns of operation allow some unsafe trucks to roam free.

"We found TIR management did not sufficiently control safety, inspection and enforcement program activities to ensure key factors contributing to truck accidents were adequately addressed and program objectives were achieved," stated the report.

"Important information such as accident data and truck travel patterns were not routinely analyzed.

The AG also found major procedural and performance inconsistencies between various weigh scales, such as the number of tickets handed out and trucking infractions reported varied widely between weigh scales.

Evans says that when inspectors notice a problem, a more detailed inspection will be undertaken.

As many as 4,000 trucks a day pass the weigh station on Highway 102 near the Halifax airport, Evans said, and his staff does about 30,000 in-depth checks each year.

The full AG report can be accessed here.