Glib response rubs salt into Truckers’ wounds

“Ontario has the safest roads in all of North America” is a vague and inaccurate statement

Traffic statistics are a complicated, challenging area in which to make bold statements or simple comparisons.

You could be referring to Canadian or American systems of measure, categories of vehicles or miles driven, collisions or fatalities. The American National Highway Safety Administration breaks accidents down to months of the year; days of the week; and hours of the day. Categories measured include Age; Alcohol/Alcohol-Impaired Driving; Older Population; Driver License Status; Gender/Sex; Large Trucks; Vehicle Types; and Vehicle Size.

So when Ontario’s Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria answers questions in Parliament or in the media by saying “Ontario has the safest roads in all of North America,” it really could mean anything. Or nothing, if you don’t even know exactly to which statistic he is referring.

What’s more, stakeholders and industry observers who watched the change in Ministers from Mulroney to Sarkaria with hopes that it would bring changes in policies and programs are growing increasingly irritated with the glib response: “Ontario has the safest roads in all of North America.”

(Although, this may yet be a better answer than the one provided by Associate Minister Vijay Thanigasalam, on October 3, 2023. When asked what Ontario was doing to improve road safety in the North, he replied proudly that “We are bringing the Northlander back” – referring to the passenger rail service cancelled by the Liberals in 2012).

“It’s like Caroline Mulroney picked up her purse and her coat and left the office, leaving her files and her messaging behind,” sighs Travis McDougall of Truckers for Safer Highways. “Minister Sarkaria says all the same things, and does all the same things, that Mulroney left behind. We were hoping to see more.”

Ouch…it’s got to be hard for a Minister as smart and ambitious as Prabmeet Sarkaria to hear that.

Winter 2023 saw several brutal weeks of commercial vehicle crashes in Northern Ontario, including one in which a snow plow driver was killed and another in which a transport truck left the highway and struck two houses. For Truckers worried about safety, hearing the phrase “Ontario has the safest roads in all of North America” again and again was like rubbing salt in an open wound.

Road Warrior News wrote Minister Sarkaria’s office in January to determine specifically which statistic or set of statistics he is referring to when he uses this phrase.

The response from Sarkaria’s office on January 12 reads: “This is based on Ontario’s fatality rate of 0.50 per 10,000 licensed drivers.”

(Actually, Ontario’s most recent final Road Safety Report 2020 does not claim the province is “the safest in all of North America” but notes that this rate “continues to position Ontario as a road safety leader in Canada and in North America.”)

Accidents per 10,000 licensed drivers may be a comforting statistic to use in Southern Ontario, where the population is dense, the highways are wide, and the weather is moderate most of the time.

“Just considering the topography of the North, the features of the land we drive across – the elevations, the visibility, the narrow highways – it’s a completely different driving universe,” McDougall points out. “Never mind the weather. It’s a different world.”

McDougall has grown so frustrated with Ontario’s failure to address the unique situation in the North, that TFSH issued a statement this year asking northern drivers for reports of accidents and road closures this winter so it can compile its own list.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: in 2023, Ontario’s Provincial Police released statistics involving commercial vehicles and noting that the 2022 was the worst year in a decade for commercial vehicle collisions:

“In 2022, the OPP responded to 9,110 collisions that involved a transport truck, marking the highest number of transport truck-related crashes on OPP-patrolled roads in more than 10 years.”

In 2022, it posted 2021 statistics with a dramatic rising arrow graphic illustrating a 40 per cent increase in commercial vehicle collisions (featured image, above).

In 2019, “The unfortunate reality is that with only 13.3 per cent of the provincial population, rural Ontario accounted for 48 per cent of traffic fatalities on municipal roads,” Ontario’s Good Roads Association reported.

Certainly, apples-to-apples comparisons of precise categories of statistics are valuable and important measures, which Ontario needs in order to create the safest road policies possible.

But when politicians cherry-pick the best stats, in vague categories, in select areas to AVOID improving road safety policies, it’s an embarrassing shame, and one that could lead to fatal mistakes.