OPP partnering with MTO for Operation Corridor
ORILLIA, Ont. — The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) revealed today that it is teaming up with the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) for Operation Corridor on June 16.
Operation Corridor is a 24-hour enforcement and education initiative aimed at encouraging all commercial vehicle drivers to help keep Ontario roads safe.
Among the truck-related collisions on OPP-patrolled roads between 2011 and 2015, 260 of them resulted in at least one fatality, the OPP said. Many of the crashes involved multiple fatalities with a total of 321 people having lost their lives.
Of the victims, 281 of them were drivers and passengers in other vehicles involved in the crashes. The other 40 victims were drivers of the transport trucks. This mean, on average over the five-year period, for every transport truck driver that died in these collisions, there were seven other lives lost, the OPP said, adding commercial truck drivers to make road safety their number one priority.
“Every life we lose on our roads is tragic and, sadly, the highest price we pay for crashes on OPP-patrolled roads is in the loss of human life,” saidsaid OPP deputy commissioner Brad Blair, Provincial Commander of Traffic Safety and Operational Support. “As our latest data tells us, crashes involving commercial motor vehicles usually result in a higher number of multiple fatalities when compared to collisions involving regular-sized vehicles. Although our officers see many safe drivers on our roads every day, those who are not need to know just how devastating and costly it can be when they fail to make safe driving decisions or do not undertake proper maintenance and truck inspections.”
During Operation Corridor, officers and their MTO officer will be ensuring that commercial truck drivers are driving safely and that their trucks are being properly inspected and maintained.
Have your say
This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.
No one would contest that even one death is a tragedy to be avoided, regardless of how caused; and further that highway deaths in particular are not just tragic but almost always preventable. As such, efforts to reduce them are worthy of significant efforts. That being said, I have some concerns with respect to the implications of this article. The statistics quoted imply that the behaviours or safety of commercial vehicles and their drivers are causally linked to a disproportionate number of deaths in motor vehicle collisions. While there is no denying the relationship between the collision and the resulting fatalities and / or injury incidence rates, these are not the sole causal factors in these outcomes. And some are – flying wheels being one of the disappointing and devastating examples. At the same time, failing to provide any context to these statistics can lead to incorrect conclusions by those less well versed in the specifics of the issue at hand. Commercial motor vehicles tend to have one driver per vehicle, and occasionally 2. They are not capable (with notable exceptions, such as motor coaches or city works crew cabs, the numbers of which are statistically dwarfed by commercial trucks) of carrying more. Non commercial motor vehicles are designed to carry up to 7. So the laws of probability indicate that the chances of a greater number of fatalities arising as a result of a crash between the two different vehicle types is, for all intents and purposes, 100%. It also ignores a basic rules of physics. An object whose mass is approximately 32 times the mass of another (80,000lb truck versus 2500lb car) will completely overwhelm the lighter mass object when the two meet. So again, by default a greater number of fatalities and greater severity of injuries will be experienced in the vehicle of less mass. At the same time, there is no mention of the respective findings as to which party is historically at fault in these collisions. That is a materially important and relevant fact. The information that is available as the results of studies indicate that non commercial vehicles are found at fault in a statistically significant proportion of accidents between the two types of vehicles. As I stated in the opening – any death is tragic and we must all strive to eliminate each and every occurrence. There is a significant moral and legal responsibility on the part of all commercial truck operators to do everything in their power to avoid contributing to highway injuries and fatalities. But care must be taken when making representations that context of statistical information be provided.
Why is it that we need to have these so called Blitz’s. Do the Mto and opp not have a job to do on a every day basis. So why for the Blitz’s. Hmm let me guess the Ontario government needs more money. So why not go to the big ATM machine called truck drivers. If they would only do there job in the first place on a daily basis and patrol not just truck drivers but the 4 wheelers too the roads would be a lot safer out here.they get a government paycheck and benefits with a good retirement plan. All from are backs just do there job and I bet the raods will be safer. That is only my opinion
Although the industry does still not see it, enforcement is the only means. A repeat offender should also have his AZ license reduced to a G and CVOR cancelled. The fines seem to have little impact on many carriers. Blitzes should be performed like Black ops, at all times of the day and night especially in high theft of trailer areas, ie. Brampton, Mississuaga, Montreal West Island, Ottawa/Gatineau. Tracking devices should be used by all carriers with geofencing. Where the crime goes so do the lousy and dangerous operators.
Typical response from those self appointed “much smarter people”, you know … the bureaucrats, politicians, those driving around in OPP & MTO vehicles, they can’t control the masses in automobiles from doing stupid things and killing themselves, so they’ll go after those “menaces” in the trucks. Yah, thats the problem. They are going to “educate” you. In their world view, its the truck drivers who are the problem to everything on the roadways.
Thousands of 3500 lb cars race by daily at 130 – 140KPH, cut in front of a 100,000 lb truck and slam on their brakes for an exit, and it is the poor bastard in the truck who is at fault of crushing the carload of people…? Its the truck driver who needs to be “educated” and beaten? Maybe we should educate the fence posts, telephone poles, rocks & trees when people crash cars in to them as well.
When a carload of people drives in front of a train and gets crushed, is it the train engineer who is the menace? Is it his fault the the statistics for car vs train is so in favor of the train? Does he need to face enforcement and be “educated”?
This is more of the same BS trotted out everyday on every issue from “law enforcement”, gov’t cannot solve any single problem they face, not one. Crime, drugs, trafficking, terrorism, public behavior on the roadway, whatever…. not one. Because bureaucrats, elitist politicians & police think they are so much smarter than everyone else, yet they are so impotent in admitting, facing & attacking real sources of problems, instead always going after the easy targets, the ones they can blame and get away with pilfering and abusing without risking votes or a backlash. Its always photo ops & feel good headlines. Nothing else. Simple solutions for simple minds.
Bring on those damn driver less trucks if you think thats the panacea to the world’s problems, but the idiots in cars will still collide with the trucks & die. Even then, somehow, the OPP & MTO will find a way to blame the truck.
The best thing any truck driver out there can do today , is toss the keys in the garbage can like I did and get as far away from this rotten, abusive industry as they can. Take a job doing anything else, anything other than driving a truck. Otherwise you will only continue to be treated like the Sh*t on the bottom of someone’s shoe, because that is what the public thinks of you, it is what the law thinks of you, it is what the politicians & bureaucrats think of you, and it is what the trucking associations and company management thinks of you.
If US numbers correspond to Canadian accidents then we can assume the overwhelming majority of truck/car collisions, and the subsequent lives lost, are the fault of car drivers, correct?
As regrettable as lost lives are, the question needs to be asked, if this is indeed the case, why the OPP and the MTO are targeting commercial drivers, who are the real victims of these accidents by the simple logic equation that commercial drivers are the ones being involved in accidents by the actions of others outside of the commercial driver’s sphere of control.
The unfortunate deaths of car drivers are a simple matter of physics, not commercial driver error. Again, logic will tell you that 80,000+ lb commercial trucks will win out over a 4,000 lb cars every time.
Once again, the professional commercial driver pays for the government’s inability to properly educate the general motoring public, and enforce that education, on how to drive safely each and every time they use the roadways of the province and the country.
Perhaps a better use of OPP and MTO time and effort should be to target motorists that are blatantly oblivious to the enormous responsibility they are taking on every time they get into their car.
Just my humble 2 cents worth on a Thursday morning.