Letter: Highway safety a concern across northern Ontario

The following letter from a Timmins resident appeared in Thunder Bay News Watch:

I wanted to reach out to those commuters who use highways from North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and all the small communities along those routes.

I read your news every day, and it is really disturbing to hear that a fatality or road closure has occurred with another transport.

The NDP has requested that the Ford government needs to take action on the matter regarding accidents, driving behaviour and especially the training that is required in order to make these “new" drivers understand safety.

My family and I have been travelling these roads for the past 47 years, and believe me, I am more paranoid in driving from “point A to point B" thinking, is the highway closed due to a transport in the ditch or a fatality has just occurred.

I have seen all kinds of crazy acts by some transport drivers such as; driving over the yellow line, hitting the shoulder, passing on a hill or transports driving so close to each other that the identity signs on the rear doors can almost be touched.

As a safety professional, there needs to be more action taken on how the training is endured, who is authorizing the training and “sign-off,” and what experience does the newly trained transport driver have, especially on our northern roads and dealing with the weather.

I would also like to mention, that over the years of my travelling to Thunder Bay, I can count with the fingers on my hand the number of times where the MTO scale inspection stations were in full operation. Also these stations are not open into the early hours past midnight — so the transport drivers pass by them with no complications.

With this note, I hope that other people travelling these highways, realize the possible dangers not caused by themselves but, by those 40-tonne “ missiles” — a whole family could be lost within a matter of seconds all because a trucking company wants to “make a profit and deliver the goods”.

Finally, it saddens my heart when a transport is “clocked” over the speed limit through a residential area, and when a transport “plows” through someone’s home.

Gary Kader, Timmins