Ontario Provincial Police say truckers, not drivers of passenger vehicles were at fault in two thirds of all crashes involving transport trucks this year.
In 5,700 big rig crashes on OPP-patrolled roads so far in 2017, OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt says truckers were to blame 65% of the time, 35% for passenger vehicles drivers.
Schmidt says that reverses a trend.
Over the five previous years Schmidt says there have been about 375 fatal crashes involving transport trucks in Ontario. In those cases, truckers were to blame only 35% of the time, passenger vehicles drivers the other 65%.
Schmidt could not say why professional drivers seem to be responsible for more crashes but highlighted the perils of inattentive and distracted driving.
"It's the number one killer on the roads and probably the number one issue that we see everyday with drivers of all vehicles not paying attention."
Last month OPP commissioner Vince Hawkes slammed careless truck drivers and put the industry 'on notice' that police would pursue every investigative avenue to hold those drivers to account.
Six days later police suggested inattention was behind an apocalyptic and deadly crash on Hwy 400 that involved at least two fuel tankers. That prompted the Ontario Safety League to call for a coroner's inquest into deadly crashes involving transports.
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Schmidt got some sense of how busy the cab of a big rig can be on Wednesday, riding in a transport truck loaded with police vehicles.
"You don't have the back window...to look around you all the time. So really the driver is very busy checking his mirrors all the time. He's so up high, there's cars that can hide out in blind spots behind him, beside him and even directly in front of him. And that's why there's so many mirrors on these truck tractors that really requires the driver to constantly be scanning.
We see drivers cutting in front and causing really grief for the driver because their stopping distance is gong to be a lot longer than a smaller passenger vehicle."
Advocates for the trucking business insist transportation companies in Ontario take safety seriously, and are looking at ways to address concerns over truck drivers who cause collisions.
"We need to take a step back and take a 20,000-foot view of what's going on," says Ontario Trucking Association spokesperson Marco Beghetto.
"One thing that we can all agree on is that we're seeing is perhaps in increase in errors related to driver behaviour."
Beghetto says the OTA is pushing to raise the standards for truck driver training in Ontario, as well as encourage trucking companies to adopt new technology that could improve road safety.
Officials with the OPP and the Trucking Association will discuss the spike in at-fault truckers at a meeting next month.
(with files from James Moore)