Miscellaneous Safety Issues

Recently, pressure has been put on the administration of the State of Ohio by the Ohio Trucking Association to increase at 65mph the speed limit of heavy trucks on the interstate roads of the state. Already the Ohio Turnpike did so to bring back the trucks that had deserted the toll road, mostly because of the increases of the cost to use it. This had showed no significant increase in accidents involving heavy trucks. The OTA, not the one of Ontario but of Ohio, is pushing this issue with safety concerns of reducing rear end collision of trucks by lighter vehicles. This is an argument I have heard of before but not by a trucking association but by two truckers associations.

On the topic of speed limits, this brings me to speed limiters. Accordingly to our politicians north of the border, this is a safety and an environment measure. At a presentation to the Subcommittee on Transport and Transit, Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, was not in harmony with ATA’s Vice-Chairman Tommy Hodges on the issue. The proposal to return to a federally mandated maximum speed of 65mph across the country and to mandate the use of the speed limiter on all trucks at the same speed was not welcomed. Chairman DeFazio event commented on the ATA’s testimony that it was the weakest leg of the measure they proposed to reduce GHG’s in the U.S. of A. by the ATA.

I’m starting to like democrats more…

Let’s come back closer to home. For the last year or so, I travelled a lot more in the “Belle Province” and I noticed the poor state of the lines on the roadways. I remember in the past a former government of the USSQ* had modified the width and the length of the solid and dotted lines on the roads. This was to save millions of our hard worked tax dollars. In the same piece of legislation, the level of reflective particles was reduced also. This brought to me the thought, and I hope someone at the “Table de la Sécurité Routière” will read this and at least give me the credit for it…

If accident and lost of control happens more in the evening, at night or in poor weather, may the lack of reflection or poor visibility of the line be a factor in these accidents?

I do understand that a coat of grime by calcium can cause a lost of reflection by the lights on the lines, as on the sides or rears of commercial trucks with the reflective tapes, but when it rains, it is almost impossible to see the edge or the center lines. This has no sense. I noticed that more one late evening coming back thru Vermont on I-91. The same vehicle, the same weather, the same headlights and when I told the Customs agent I had nothing to declare, I could barely see where I was going. Either the cycles of repainting or the quality of the paint has to be revised as soon as possible and we could see clearly if our roads would become safer.

*Union of the Socialist State of Quebec