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Apr 1, 2006 12:00 PM

Canada's trucking companies are calling for the nation's provincial governments to put the brakes on speeding trucks. The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), a federation of provincial trucking associations, has endorsed a national policy calling upon all provincial governments to mandate that the speed limiters on all trucks that operate into, out of, and within their provinces be activated and that the maximum speed of trucks be set at no more than 105 km/hour.

A speed limiter is a built-in microchip that allows a truck engine's top speed to be preset. Virtually all trucks built in the past decade come equipped with this technology. The law would apply not only to all Canadian heavy trucks, but also to United States trucks that come into Canada. David Bradley, CTA chief executive officer, said that while truck drivers are, as a group, Canada's safest drivers and the least likely to be excessively speeding, “We want to eliminate speeding altogether; the environmental and safety benefits are simply too significant to ignore.”

Safety and environmental groups that publicly support the proposal include: the Canada Safety Council, Pollution Probe, the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, SmartRisk, the Lung Association, the Canadian Transportation Equipment Association, and the Insurance Bureau of Canada.