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Opinion: Defective commercial trucks nailed in Burnaby ticket blitz

A team of Burnaby RCMP traffic officers and other law-enforcement agencies staged day two on Wednesday of a three-day joint initiative on local roads.
commercial vehicle burnaby
A dump truck is inspected on Tuesday on Gaglardi Way in Burnaby by RCMP during a commercial vehicle sweep. Chris Campbell

A team of Burnaby RCMP traffic officers and other law-enforcement agencies staged day two on Wednesday of a three-day joint initiative on local roads.

Teams of officers and inspectors were out at multiple locations in Burnaby and it didn’t take long to find some scary commercial vehicles.

In all, 36 commercial vehicles inspected and 11 of them were identified as unsafe to continue and removed from the roadway, according to Burnaby RCMP.

Police issued 33 violation tickets and inspectors identified 36 mechanical defects. Let me do the math for you – that’s an average of one mechanical defect per vehicle.

This followed the first day of inspections on Gaglardi Way. Out of 47 trucks inspected, 40 received violation tickets, said police, and 20 were deemed “unsafe” to continue on local roadways due to various mechanical issues or problems with unsecured loads that couldn’t be immediately rectified.

A total of 149 mechanical defects were detected by inspectors, said police.

Police said vehicles carrying hazardous loads are targeted by the RCMP during these inspections. Seven of the trucks inspected on Tuesday received dangerous goods violation tickets of $575 each. Out of those seven, he said, two had hazardous loads that were not secured in the vehicle.

It’s this kind of information that makes me terrified to drive on our roads because every time I see a commercial vehicle, I now assume it’s unsafe.

The commercial trucking industry and various levels of government need to do more about training and inspections.

People’s lives are at stake.

Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.