TORONTO — Safety officials in the Picture Province must like the image of slower trucks on the highway because it’s reportedly the latest province in Canada to ponder a speed limiter mandate on all commercial trucks.

According to the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — the U.S. trucker group that has been actively opposed to speed limiter enforcement taking effect in Ontario and Quebec this summer  — New Brunswick Public Safety Registrar, Charles O’Donnell, is working on a recommendation for speed limiters in the province.

O’Donnell says no decision has been made, but expects that the Legislative Assembly will consider a bill "within the near future."

O’Donnell — who is also vice president of the national Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) — is traveling this week, but Peter Nelson of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association confirmed to todaystrucking.com that the process is underway.

Under the direction of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the APTA endorses a provincial speed limiter rule.

Particularity because of Atlantic Canada’s strong transport links to Ontario and Quebec, Nelson says a mandate makes sense for New Brunswick also.

While the issue of mandatory speed limiters has no doubt been controversial, Nelson doesn’t expect the same level of anxiety witnessed in Ontario to affect his province.

"Looking at most of our carriers, their trade takes place mostly with Ontario and Quebec where there’s already speed limiter rules and certainly with last year’s fuel prices, most people who didn’t have speed limiters in place pretty much have them by now," Nelson tells us. "Also, many of our major fleets have had them for a number of years and some some even well below 105 km/h."

For the most part, New Brunswick’s highway system is two-laned, meaning speeds are restricted to most vehicles on the road anyway. (However, four-lane sections in the province are expanding and those stretches can be capped as high as 110 km/h).

"We’re not talking about a lot of highway here where speeds over 100 km/h," Nelson says. "Speed limiters really won’t be a big deal for most of us."

Despite recent comments from a Nova Scotia transport department spokesman that there are no plans to implement speed limiters in that province, Nelson expects that’ll change if its neighbor follows through.

"My guess is down the road, you’ll see Nova Scotia put them in place as well."

OOIDA Director of Regulatory Affairs Rick Craig says Nova Scotia is concerned that the potential for an even greater speed differential between cars and trucks could expose drivers to more accident risk.

"New Brunswick is jumping the gun on this,” he told OOIDA’s official publication, Land Line. "No one has proven the benefits of speed limiters or disproven the points we’ve made about the negative implications of speed-limiter mandates."