OTA sends the PR cavalry to educate media on truck safety

TORONTO — The Ontario Trucking Association is dispatching its Road Knights Team to remind motorists of how to safely share the road with a truck after a fatal collision in Toronto.

Police are attributing the crash to an unsafe lane change by a car driver. The driver attempted to make a lane change in the eastbound Highway 401 collector lanes without being aware there was a tractor-trailer coming up beside him. “The driver lost control and he actually swerved under the wheels of the big rig,” said O.P.P. Sgt. Cam Woolley.

Ontario Trucking Association communications manager Rebecka Torn says the “sad situation has sparked renewed interest about what motorists needs to know to safely share the road with commercial vehicles.”

Angus MacCormac a team member who drives for Bison Transport in Mississauga devoted much of the afternoon talking to reporters about road safety issues. He also took several television reporters on ride-alongs in his truck to give the perspective of the road from the truck driver’s vantage point.

“The message the Road Knights deliver is extremely important. A study conducted by the American Automobile Association’s Foundation for Traffic Research concluded that 54 percent of fatal collisions involving a car and tractor-trailer are caused by car drivers,” says Torn.

The US findings echo Canadian research that for many years has consistently shown car drivers to be the one’s found driving improperly in 70 to 80 percent of fatal car-truck collisions.

For more information about the OTA Road Knights Team program please follow this link: http://www.ontruck.org/info/knights/