OTTAWA — Expect to hear a lot more about side guards being installed on your vehicles in the days to come.

In a front-page feature Monday, The Globe and Mail reported that the Federal Government pulled funding from a research program that, the newspaper claims, was showing that side skirts do in fact make trucks safer.

According to the Globe, “A copy of the study’s first phase, obtained by the Globe and Mail through access to information legislation, reveals the National Research Council (NRC) reported promising findings from its initial analysis of side skirts. All three models tested prevented bicycles from sliding underneath a transport truck in a collision.”

The story also says a spokesman for Transport Canada said the decision to cancel the investigation was made “at the scientific and technological level and not by Transport Minister Denis Lebel.”

You can read the whole story here.