By Staff
August 31st, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
A joint two day operation involving the Ministry of Transportation and Halton Regional Police Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspectors occurred on August 25 and 26, 2020, in Burlington.
The results of the 2020 two day venture is as follows:
• 111 Inspections (heavy and light commercial motor vehicles)
• 40 vehicles placed out of service for either mechanical or driver related issues
• 110 Provincial Offence Notices issued
• 1 arrest for blood alcohol concentration 80mgs or more
The results of previous commercial vehicle inspects in 2018 and 2019 are set out below.
In 2019, despite very poor weather conditions they inspected more than 300 commercial motor vehicles.
The two-day enforcement blitz, that involved officers and inspectors from the Halton Regional Police Service, along with assistance from neighbouring police services, the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Finance/ Environment yielded the following results:
• Total commercial motor vehicles inspected: 308
• Total commercial motor vehicles taken out of service: 99 (33 percent failure rate)
• Total charges laid: 239
• Sets of licence plates seized by police: 11
2018 Results:
• Total commercial motor vehicles inspected: 443
• Total commercial motor vehicles taken out of service: 143 (32 percent failure rate)
• Total charges laid: 268
• Sets of licence plates seized by police: 13
This is disgraceful! Can we get data on what kind of trucks failed? I bet dump trucks.
The police do a good job with these safety blitzes–primarily, they target older vehicles and vehicles that don’t look in the best of condition. So it should be no surprise that there is a high percentage of charges laid relative to the number of stops. Also the readers should note that a high percentage of these charges were likely paperwork offences.
However, I can relate a story that happened to me. I was in a one-year old, pristine cube van when I got pulled over by an officer who indicated he was doing a “safety check”; it took him three minutes to a walk-around of my vehicle (my proper safety check that I had done before setting out took nearly 20 minutes in complying with Motor Vehicle requirements). This safety check was just a pretext to do a paperwork check (an attempt at a revenue-raising fishing expedition); fortunately I had all the requirements in a file neatly labelled, “Police Inoculation”. Officer went away disappointed. The reality is that street stops of this kind mostly target small independent drivers who have a greater probability of not having the paperwork in order.
This article is misleading. Having run my own business for sometime now it never ceases to amaze me that they report the numbers but never show what the charges were nor do you hear from the people being charged. Vehicles can be taken out of service for example, for simply having the safety sticker in the wrong location or failing to note a minor defect in a circle check. Even if the defect occurred during travel! Not only that but the MTO also has their own enforcement unit and it is possible to get pulled over twice in one day for the same thing (although not likely). Don’t be fooled by this article. This is tax on businesses that are required to run commercial vehicles. Why else would you have 2 different governmental enforcement units doing the same thing in the same area. The only reason Halton has one is because they didn’t want to be left out of the money grab. Other regions don’t have one. Don’t get me wrong. If you have a vehicle about to clearly fall apart then that’s your fault and deserve to get pulled over but most of the time that’s not the case and you’ll only ever hear from the police’s side of things in the news.