Canada needs highway safety watchdog
Broncos bus crash highlights gaps, Ahmed Shalaby says.
With the conclusion of the RCMP investigation into the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, and the commencement of court action against truck driver Jaskirat Sidhu, many unanswered questions remain. Chief among them is if rural roads are any safer today than before the crash.
Although the RCMP reconstruction of the crash led to 29 charges against Sidhu, little else is known.
Experts pointed to the two-way stop signs, a stand of trees obstructing the view of both drivers, and the absence of rumble strips as potential contributing factors in the crash, in addition to the possibility of Sidhu’s limited commercial driving experience.
Sidhu’s truck consisted of a tractor towing two semi-trailers. Its overall length was in excess of 25 metres, and it could weigh up to 65 tonnes when fully loaded. It is a difficult truck to manoeuvre or drive.
Moreover, driver training is not mandatory for commercial drivers in any province except Ontario, where minimum training of 103.5 hours was introduced last July. Prairie provinces and British Columbia will introduce mandatory driver training, but it will not kick in until next year at the earliest. Transport Canada will require seat belts on coaches in 2020.
Because none of these factors has changed in a substantive and systemic way, whether at Armley Corner where the crash occurred, or at the tens of thousands of similar rural intersections in Canada, we are not any safer today, more than 100 days after the crash.
The truck’s owner did not breach any rules by assigning a truck of this size to a novice driver and was not charged by the RCMP.
Transport Canada regulates strict pilot training requirements, but not commercial truck driver training requirements. Those are left to each province.
The checkered status quo of road safety is largely due to the absent leadership of Transport Canada, and the lack of oversight by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB).
Transport Canada’s mandate includes only limited fragments of road safety, leaving the bulk of the regulations and design standards to the provinces, without federal guidance. The TSB’s mandate covers safety investigations of air, rail, marine and pipeline transportation, but intentionally not road transportation, despite it being the cause of nearly 95 per cent of all transportation fatalities in Canada.
A case in point is the 2013 collision between an Ottawa transit double-decker bus and a Via Rail train at a level crossing in Ottawa. The bus failed to stop clear of the rail line, and the Via train sheared off its front end. Six people died and 35 were injured, all on the bus.
Because the crash involved a train, it fell under the TSB’s jurisdiction. The TSB conducted an independent safety investigation and issued recommendations. For example, Transport Canada was asked to develop crashworthiness standards for buses, and to equip buses with event data recorders.
It is quite disappointing that no independent federal investigators were deployed to the tragic Broncos bus crash. Because the crash was exclusively between two highway vehicles, it was under provincial jurisdiction and outside the TSB’s mandate.
Armed with an unrestricted mandate, federal investigators would have identified safety upgrades that must be applied across the country, such as whether additional endorsements or training should be required to drive trucks that pull multiple trailers.
They also would have ensured that every intersection, curve, and bridge meets a minimum and uniform safety criteria.
The 2017 Grenfell tower fire in London, England, brought sweeping changes to fire safety regulations in the United Kingdom and internationally.
The Humboldt Broncos crash must also bring sweeping changes to road safety. It is time for Canada to establish a road safety watchdog (or empower the TSB) to independently investigate significant road crashes and bridge collapses for the benefit of all Canadians.
We are not any safer today, more than 100 days after the crash.