Commercial vehicles in BC are governed by the National Safety Code (NSC), a set of federal standards that is supported by provincial regulations. According to BC’s Commercial Vehicle Safety Enforcement (CVSE) branch, which enforces the NSC, the “rationale behind the program is that carriers are responsible for mechanical maintenance of their commercial vehicles and the actions of drivers over which they exercise control.” The regulations define requirements governing both drivers and vehicles, including such things as drivers’ hours of service, monitoring driver records, and conducting pre-trip and post-trip vehicle inspections.
The BC Trucking Association (BCTA) is committed to road safety, including just and fair government regulations and enforcement. While we strongly support the intent of the NSC and other regulations, we have found that a few requirements are unnecessarily stringent, while others do not go far enough. BCTA is also actively developing preventative strategies, such as the creation of an industry safety council, to provide the industry with more tools for successfully incorporating safety in the day-to-day business of transportation.
Below is a sampling of BCTA’s safety initiatives, including issues, concerns and recommendations that we have raised with the provincial government.
- BC Trucking Safety Council
- Driver Safety
- Vehicle Safety
- Improved NSC Enforcement
- Shipper Responsibility
BC Trucking Safety Council
In 2008, with funding from WorkSafeBC, BCTA established the BC Trucking Safety Council to serve the occupational health and safety needs of the industry. In the first two years, the Council is focusing on creating a strategic plan, establishing a board of directors, and developing a safety certificate of recognition (COR) program for trusted carriers.
Under the COR program, trucking companies would voluntarily agree to have senior management undertake supplementary worker health and safety training, provide training to key employees, conduct regular and ongoing evaluations on worker health and safety practices, and upgrade any safety practices and processes that these audits identify as needing improvement.
The Trucking Safety Council has also contracted the Traffic Injury Research Foundation to study and understand truck crash causal factors with a view to developing strategies to mitigate and reduce the incidence of truck crashes in BC. Research began in May 2008 and results will be incorporated into the Council’s strategic plan.
Driver Safety
Hours of Service
The Canadian Hours of Service Regulations were brought into force for federal (interprovincial) carriers on January 1, 2007 and provincial carriers in March 2007. The main provisions largely reflect the position advocated by the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) and BCTA, with a few exceptions, and take into account scientific research on fatigue and industry’s need to maintain productivity.
Although hours-of-service regulations are intended to safeguard drivers, BCTA opposed the onerous and detailed record-keeping requirements for local BC drivers, since their on-duty hours rarely prevent them from getting adequate rest. Recording a change of duty status for each stop and each driver is impractical, if not impossible, for some trucking companies and does not contribute to improved road safety.
In addition, BCTA expressed concerns about the restrictions that the 16-hour working window places on drivers who regularly use BC Ferries. Current regulation does not take into account the long periods of rest that drivers have available to them while waiting for or on the ferry.
BCTA and CTA have also recommended the monitoring of drivers’ hours through mandatory use of electronic on-board recorders. For more information on hours of service requirements, click here to view Division 37 of the Motor Vehicle Act Regulations and scroll down to Part 3, Hours of Service.
Driver Sanctions
For years, BCTA has advocated that drivers who clearly demonstrate that they either do not understand or simply refuse to comply with vital safety regulations, thereby causing a threat to public safety, should be subject to a program of sanctions.
Driver error is the most common cause of crashes. As such, BCTA believes that enforcement of poor driving is an important element to improve road safety. We have made the following recommendations:
- The BC government should institute a driver sanction program with immediate consequences when it becomes clear that a commercial vehicle operator poses a serious threat to public safety. This could be modelled on the administrative justice approach available to police for impaired drivers.
- A driver should immediately be sent for re-testing if it becomes clear that he or she does not know or understand basic responsibilities (e.g., how to adjust brakes).
Driver Record Information
Trucking companies are responsible for ensuring that only qualified drivers operate commercial motor vehicles. Among other things, this includes requesting and reviewing drivers’ abstracts (i.e., records) at least annually. Most companies do this semi-annually; however, their ability to adequately evaluate the their drivers’ records is hampered by the fact that records can be incomplete, since they primarily contain information about convictions in BC only or from other jurisdictions that voluntarily provide this information to BC.
The ideal solution is a national commercial driver licensing information system that would, at a minimum, possess the following attributes:
- provide comprehensive driving performance and license status information on persons with commercial vehicle driver licenses;
- provide a data base of drivers who are disqualified anywhere in North America;
- provide companies with electronic/Internet access to driver abstracts;
- notify companies of all infractions pending against drivers and owner-operators immediately when a ticket has been issued for a commercial vehicle infraction;
- notify companies immediately when a conviction has been obtained;
- include information on 24-hour administrative prohibitions; and
- record convictions, crash data and disqualifications on abstracts in a timely manner.
Until such a national data base is available, BCTA recommends that commercial driver infractions from other jurisdictions be recorded on driver abstracts. (Note: these are currently recorded on the trucking company’s NSC record.)
NSC carriers obtain drivers’ abstracts from the Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC). For more information, visit ICBC’s licensing webpage.
Driver Training & Licensing Standards
Given that human error plays a significant role in safety on the road, BCTA’s initiatives to improve standards and certification for both new and experienced drivers go hand-in-hand with our commitment to safety for the industry. Following are some of our safety-related human resources projects:
- Research on Safety & New Commercial Drivers: BCTA, with the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council (CTHRC), is undertaking a two-phase study in Western Canada to understand the risks associated with new commercial drivers within their first 12 months of obtaining a licence and whether those risks can be mitigated by a more arduous driver licensing test and/or more rigorous pre-licensing driver training.
Results from this survey could help encourage action on provincial standards for both driver training and testing. BCTA has advocated that ICBC and/or the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General analyse the relationship between driver poor performance and licensing standards to determine whether more stringent standards would help to reduce crashes. - Professional Driver Training Program: The BC Industry Training Authority (ITA) has accepted a BCTA proposal to pilot test an entry-level driver training program that is based on the National Occupational Standards for Entry-Level Drivers. The program includes pre-qualifying trainees to ensure that they meet commercial driver medical standards and possess minimum literacy and numeracy skills. Successful applicants would then undertake eight weeks of classroom training, followed by the licensing test and a four-week on-the-job training component paired with a qualified, trained and experienced professional driver. Trainees would receive certification only after at least 1000 hours of professional driving experience and successful completion of an ITA exam.
ITA certification also requires that training institutions and instructors meet accreditation standards.
Vehicle Safety
Truck Impoundment
Currently, trucks that exhibit defects during on-road inspections can be placed out of service. BCTA recommends that more severe sanctions be implemented against the owners of commercial vehicles who consistently operate grossly unsafe vehicles, including vehicle impoundment for progressively longer periods of time. Impounding a substandard truck would automatically include significant financial consequences, since the owner would be responsible for towing and impoundment charges and, importantly, lose the ability to earn revenue from the vehicle while it is impounded.
While poor mechanical condition is only identified as a crash factor in about four percent of fatal and injury crashes, it is generally conceded that these factors are under-reported. Importantly, a low threat of apprehension combined with insignificant consequences allow unscrupulous operators to undercut responsible carriers by reducing their maintenance costs, thus creating an unfair competitive advantage.
Because of our support for truck impoundment, Paul Landry, BCTA’s President & CEO, was invited to co-chair the Truck Compliance Advisory Panel created by the BC Ministry of Transportation & Infrastructure in mid-2008. The Panel’s mandate includes:
- reviewing existing research, including ICBC crash data, to determine the role of vehicle components in large commercial vehicle crashes;
- identifying the issues which influence out-of-service rates;
- identifying enforcement strategies, sanctions for non-compliance and a communication plan for improving compliance;
- conducting research into proposed initiatives; and
- providing recommendations to the Minister of Transportation & Infrastructure.
BCTA will report on the results of the Panel’s findings once these are available.
North American Load Securement Standard
The new North American load securement standard came into effect in British Columbia on January 1, 2005 and has been enforced since July 1, 2005. BCTA and CTA have long supported a North American standard; however, issues of interpretation and appropriateness, as well as continued lack of uniformity have arisen. CTA and BCTA continue to advocate on behalf of the industry to respond to these issues.
Bus Safety
BCTA represents most scheduled and chartered bus companies. In 2004, the charter bus industry became de facto deregulated, which means that new bus companies do not have to establish “need” for a service. Therefore, the only regulation governing charter buses is safety regulation. Given this situation, BCTA made the following recommendations to enhance bus safety regulation in the province:
- Enhance the NSC number issuance process by introducing such things as a mandatory audit with a prescribed timeframe.
- Enhance enforcement. Historically, buses tend not to be as scrutinized as trucks by on-road enforcement officers.
- Create bus-only groupings of companies to develop industry-specific enforcement thresholds. Currently bus and truck companies are compared based on fleet size even though their operating characteristics are quite different.
Improved NSC Enforcement
Every operator of a commercial motor vehicle is required to apply for and satisfactorily maintain NSC standing. If a trucking or bus company or commercial drivers accumulate enough violation “points,” the company is subject to escalating enforcement. Companies are also subject to random audits of company records and facilities and to roadside inspection of vehicles. BCTA has recommended the following changes to improve the NSC:
- Increase penalties for not applying for an NSC number. Companies that don’t apply for an NSC number are only subject to fines of $95 or $120. In BCTA’s view, failure to apply should be treated more severely because it indicates that these companies are either ignorant of their safety responsibilities or do not consider them to be important.
- Increase enforcement of designated inspection facilities, which are government-licensed vehicle inspection stations. BCTA recommends immediate investigation of any inspection facility that “passes” a vehicle with serious defects that a properly conducted inspection should reveal.
- Change thresholds for carrier profiles established for enforcement activity so that they are the same points per vehicle regardless of fleet size. Companies receiving warning letters are required to be interviewed or are audited depending on their performance compared to other similar-sized companies. However, the number of points required for each of these enforcement levels is different depending on the size (i.e., smaller companies can accumulate more points than larger companies on a per-vehicle basis). This is a particularly important point since BC safety statistics indicate that companies operating fewer vehicles tend to be a higher safety risk than companies operating large fleets, who have, generally speaking, more resources and better management systems.
Shipper Responsibility
Shipper legislation would require that customers of trucking companies be equally liable, along with trucking companies, for meeting certain safety requirements, such as legal weights and dimensions. At present, trucking companies solely bear this responsibility, but they do not always have control over these issues. For example, dump truck drivers may have little control over the amount of aggregate that is loaded by the shipper and/or drivers may be coerced into taking exceptionally heavy loads to reduce shipping costs. Shipper responsibility legislation, properly enforced, would reduce the incentive to overload and, in turn, help to preserve the road system, improve trucking and public safety, and provide a level playing field for trucking companies and shippers.
Because trucking is competitive, shippers can put pressure on trucking companies who need their business to take heavier than legal loads or to make very demanding deadlines for delivery. At the same time, shippers may be ignorant of the safety regulations governing trucking companies. Neither do they have access to information that would allow them to make an assessment about a trucking company’s safety record.
To address these problems, BCTA has recommended that the provincial government work with industry to develop shipper responsibility legislation for BC.