EDITORIAL – Bill to put dash cams in transport trucks could save lives

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

DASH CAMS in every transport truck won’t eliminate tragic accidents on our major highways but they’ll help deter reckless driving and assist investigators in assigning blame.

Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Ward Stamer has been pushing for mandatory dash cams in the big rigs since he was mayor of Barriere and this week introduced a private member’s bill in the Legislature calling for it to happen.

Careless driving by commercial truck drivers has long been a problem, and the cause of many terrible accidents. Two years ago, a professional driver who drove charter buses wrote the Armchair Mayor to say commercial semi drivers are “incompetent and untrained.”

He continued, “I see so many bad drivers on our highways. News reports are always coming in about another semi/ vehicle collision(s), and the poor motorist in their smaller vehicle gets the blame.”

Semi drivers pass on double solid lines and roar past other vehicles when it’s unsafe, he said. One of the problems, he contended, is that the drivers rush to travel as far as they possibly can within the designated number of hours they’re allowed to be on the highway before a required break.

“Remember when semi drivers were courteous professional drivers, they didn’t speed, they didn’t tailgate, they signalled. The ‘old school’ is gone.”

His solution was to put lower speed limits on commercial vehicles, hand out steep tickets to offenders and impound vehicles for non-compliance.

Yet he didn’t think forcing transport trucks to use dash cams would help. “Dash cams will not help, only severe speed enforcement by the authorities will.”

He was right about the need for enforcement. Time after time, police ask the public to provide their own dash cam footage of semi-truck driver misbehaviour if they have it, but that’s after the problem has already occurred.

So Stamer’s bill, if adopted, would be, as we often say of partial measures, “another tool in the tool belt.” It would force those drivers to think twice.

And it could save some lives.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.