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A recent safety inspection of commercial trucks in Calgary found 21 out of 26 vehicles inspected had critical or major defects, police say.
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The inspection on Stoney Trail at Crowchild Trail conducted last Thursday by police and Sheriff Highway Patrol found a typical series of defects and a known ratio of offending trucks, said Sgt. Colin Foster of the Calgary Police Service’s traffic division.
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“He walked away with a lot of tickets.”
But many of the vehicles, as is common, are ready to return to the road once their issues are addressed on site, Foster said.
Even so, some of the violations pose a definite danger on the road, with Calgary seeing double the percentage of vehicles taken out of service — 75 to 80 percent of those inspected — compared to a provincial average of 35 to 40 percent. he said.
But Foster said that’s largely due to the practice in Calgary of only flagging down trucks that show visible violations.
“We are specifically looking for those types of vehicles… I don’t want to waste the time of a driver who is going to pass inspection and waste our own time,” he said, adding that inspections can often last more than an hour.
“I’m not going to pull over every vehicle – we want to get the rubbish off the road, it’s as simple as that.”
The most common problems involve brakes, unsecured cargo loads and tires, much of which he suffers from laziness and now with the cold weather a reluctance to spend the time doing safety checks outdoors.
Fines handed out range from $243 to $324, but can be $810 for uninsured loads in safety checks that are usually held once a week in Calgary.
BKaufmann@postmedia.com
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
