QUEBEC CITY — Reducing truck crashes and equaling the competitive playing field for fleets may no longer be the main point carrier groups are riding to make mandatory speed limiters a reality across Canada — not when environmental arguments seem to carry more weight among politicians.

Although the Ontario Trucking Association first drafted the proposal urging legislation that limits trucks, through the engine’s ECM, to 105 km/h on all provincial highways, it’s the Province of Quebec that is the first jurisdiction, as the OTA puts it, “to commit to the measure.”

Quebec’s decision to legislate the activation of truck speed limiters between now and 2012 was contained in that province’s Plan of Action on Climate Change — a proposal, released last week, which has the speed limiter initiative buried among 22 other measures to reduce climate change.

While the initiative is only a proposal and must be voted on, such a measure carries a lot of momentum in La Belle Province, Quebec Trucking Association lawyer Marc Cadieux tells TodaysTrucking.com.

“Speed limiters must become a regulation. Under the plan of action on climate change, the Quebec government committed to legislate in the future,” he says, while adding that a separate government agency, the Commission sur la Sécurité Routière au Quebec, is in the meantime reviewing speed limiters from a safety standpoint.

Out of the 22 measures recommended in the environmental action plan, the one referring to speed limiters is probably the least complicated recommendation to turn into a regulation, says Cadieux, because it can be done with an amendment to the Quebec Road Safety Code, which is up for reform next fall. “The timing might be very good to include the amendment on speed limiters,” he says.

Speed limiters are the trucking industry’s contribution
to the climate change challenge, says OTA boss

OTA President David Bradley says he doesn’t mind Quebec being first out of the gates, so long as the Quebec initiative motivates Ontario policy makers to formally approve a similar bill that recently passed second reading in the Ontario Legislature.

“When you combine the environmental benefits with the safety benefits, not to mention the fuel cost savings, it’s hard to imagine why other governments won’t follow, especially since Highway 401 between the Quebec border and Toronto is the last great inter-provincial truck route in Canada,” he said.

OTA — which for a year argued speed limiters would make roads safer, save truckers’ fuel, and help member carriers that voluntarily cap speed retain drivers — was only too happy last month when Progressive Conservative environment critic MPP Laurie Scott introduced a speed limiter bill on the grounds the plan would cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Ontario trucking group estimates mandating speed at 105 km/h would save 140 kilotonnes in GHG reductions. The Quebec Government guesses, according to the OTA, that speed limiters would cut GHG by 330 kilotonnes — more than twice the OTA forecast, despite fewer trucks on the road.

“We always said our estimates of the GHG reductions were conservative,” said Bradley.

But critics of the plan — such as Owner-Operator’s Business Association of Canada Executive Director Joanne Ritchie — question how OTA and Quebec officials came up with their GHG-saving totals. Ritchie says the numbers are dubious since — by the OTA’s own admission — the large of majority of truckers currently don’t go over 105 km/h, and statistically, those that do travel faster allow the odometer to creep up only slightly above posted speeds.

Other truckers tell Today’s Trucking that some trucks — depending on loads, gear ratios and how they’re spec’ed — may actually run at optimum efficiency at slighter higher speeds in certain environments.

However, by marrying safety and efficiency with an environmental approach in championing speed limiters, Bradley says the trucking industry is taking its climate change responsibilities seriously.

“If as some Ontario politicians have argued, that combating climate change is the great environmental challenge of our generation, then requiring the use of speed limiters is the trucking industry’s contribution to that fight.”

OTA is hoping all other provincial trucking associations in Canada, with direction from the Canadian Trucking Alliance, eventually lobby for adoption of limiters as well.