By Pepper Parr
April 14, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Halton Police hosted a training course for new Commercial Motor Vehicle officers. Sixteen of the officers were from Halton – when they completed the three day course they were sent out with these newly acquired skills and inspected 48 commercial motor vehicles over the course of the day.
Rigorous road inspections results in safer transport trucks on the road. Halton just completed training 16 new officers in this specialized work.
Of those 48, 16 were taken out of service, a 33% failure rate. Officers laid 102 charges, seizing one license plate and vehicle which had not undergone a mandatory annual safety inspection.
The curriculum included cargo securement, hours of service limits, weight and dimension limits in Ontario, speed limiting equipment, Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, hazardous material spill response, wheel detachment investigations, among others.
Drivers and operators of commercial motor vehicles are responsible for ensuring that their vehicles, as well as their loads, are inspected and safe before travel. Any defect that compromises the safe operation of a vehicle can result in it being removed from service.
The police have a Regional Commercial Motor Vehicle Unit and train their officers to have the knowledge, skills and abilities to conduct commercial vehicle safety inspections and all related commercial vehicle enforcement.
If anyone has information about any motor vehicles that are unsafe on our roads, please call 911.
With a 33% failure rate perhaps the police in our city should set up truck inspections each day of the week. Every day switch it around between Dundas Street, Guelph Line, Mainway and Fairview. 33% failure is terrifying, these big trucks loaded with thousands of kilos of who-knows-what, barreling down our streets, often missing the yellow lights and straight through the red. Terrifying!