A screenshot of the dash cam video showing the semi pushing a white sedan off the road on the Yellowhead Highway. (Photo via John Keating)
The Mayor of Barriere is hoping a video of a near-miss collision on the Yellowhead Highway that is making the rounds on social media will be the catalyst for even more action to end dangerous driving on that stretch of highway.
The video shows a tractor-trailer hauling a 53-foot container force a vehicle it was trying to pass – on a double yellow – onto the shoulder of the road, as it attempted to avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming vehicle.
Mayor Ward Stamer says not only did the trucker nearly send a white car into the ditch, at the top of the Darfield four lanes headed southbound, but the oncoming vehicles had to do the same thing.
“When you get off the top of the four lane, it ends up ends up by narrowing into one lane going down the hill and two lanes coming up going north. It’s pretty obvious that there’s no reason at all that the truck should have been passing anybody in that location.”
Posted by John Keating on Friday, March 31, 2023
Stamer says incidents like this are happening on a daily basis, suggesting trucking firms are putting and keeping bad drivers on the road.
“A lot of these trucking firms what they end up doing is they end up changing their names, and they change their numbers,” he said.
“Once they get a bunch of violation tickets, that forces an audit and it’s the same principles, the same directors, the same owners of these trucking firms, trying to circumvent the rules.”
He says in addition to increased enforcement on highways, authorities should also be looking into the expectations that trucking companies have for their drivers.
“What are the expectations of these drivers getting from point A to point B? How much time is the trucking firms allowing these drivers to get there? Are they putting undue pressure on their drivers before they even get out the door?” questioned Stamer.
Stamer and other local officials along the Yellowhead corridor, north of Kamloops, have been calling for a broader crackdown on dangerous commercial trucking as more and more firms are using that route – rather than the Trans Canada – to get to and from Alberta.
Commercial vehicle inspections have risen along the Yellowhead, north of Kamloops since late February following a pair of fatal crashes. Those crashes also prompted Stamer to push for mandatory dash cams for all commercial vehicles in B.C.
