Technology to Prevent Truck and Bus Accidents

January 18, 2018, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Ottawa has determined that it’s time to update the safety features in commercial trucks and on buses in Canada in order to improve their safety on the roadways. Following a year that saw the 400 series of highways, and the Trans-Canada highway closed almost daily through Ontario with numerous fatalities this is a welcome move.

Minister of Transport Mac Garneau announced the proposed changes in mid December. The new measures include the installation of electronic stability control, and mandatory electronic logging to determine how many hours a commercial driver is on the road.  The mandatory adoption of stability control will reduce collisions by improving the directional stability of trucks, and will hep prevent rollovers. Transport Canada reported that there is an average of 2800 truck crashes yearly involving loss of control and rollover. Almost 900 of them involve personal injury or fatalities.

Rollover and loss of control crashes close the highways for extended periods of time and are most likely to cause injury, death, spillage of loads, and long delays for other drivers. The economic cost of closing the highway for hours through the Windsor – Toronto corridor is enormous. The cost of road repairs and bridge repairs is also significant in these accidents.

Electronic stability control helps drivers keep control of vehicles in emergencies when braking suddenly and swerving to avoid obstacles. The technology is also very helpful in keeping control on snowy and slippery roads. The trucking industry has given its support to the adoption of new technologies, agreeing that the technologies can often activate and help avoid accidents before the driver is aware of the problems. This move brings us inline with the American regulations but includes school buses and passenger buses as well.

The issue of driver fatigue is a serious one as well.  The tamper proof tracking devices will help to ensure that drivers do not exceed the 13-hour maximum behind the wheel time, and that they get the minimum 8 hours of off duty time before they drive again. The devices will be synced to the vehicles engine and will automatically record driver driving time and will allow for easier enforcement of rules.

These steps should help make our roads safer for truckers and car drivers.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

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