MTA opposes steep fines for bridge-hitting truckers

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s Department of Transportation is making good on a promise to hammer truckers with steep fines if they ignore signs restricting them from traveling under low bridges and overpasses.

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, a spokesman for Transportation Minister Ron Lemieux said that such legislation for careless truck drivers will be tabled later this year or early in 2008.

The news comes after the latest incident in which a truck slammed into a bridge too low for a trailer to pass under. Osborne St. was closed for several hours earlier in the week after a tractor-trailer became wedged beneath an underpass. The Free Press reports that there is a large yellow sign warning truckers of the height restrictions.

It is the seventh time this year that a truck has hit an overhanging structure.

Calls for tougher penalties intensified in July after a trucker hit the Highway 9 overpass at the north Perimeter Highway. The unit, equipped with a hydraulic crane, tried to squeeze underneath and seriously damaged a girder.

Bob Dolyniuk, general manager of the Manitoba Trucking Association, told the paper that steeper fines aren’t the answer, though. He said more education, such as minimum training standards for professional drivers, is a more viable solution.

He suggested that the ministry should include more questions on the class 1 written test about the maximum height allowed for vehicles.

— with files from the Winnipeg Free Press