Hundreds of truckers failing to comply with mandatory logging technology

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This article was published 14/01/2024 (657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hundreds of commercial truck drivers in Manitoba were subject to fines and warnings for failing to comply with federal legislation mandating the use of electronic logging devices last year.

An ELD is a tamper-resistant device that tracks a driver’s hours of service and is integrated with a commercial vehicle’s on-board electronic system. The electronic logbooks are intended to reduce collisions attributable to driver fatigue by increasing the accuracy and decreasing falsification of hours of service records.

Manitoba Motor Carrier Enforcement officers issued 360 tickets to commercial drivers between Jan. 1, 2023, and Oct. 19, 2023, for failing to properly install and operate electronic logbooks, data provided to the Free Press through a freedom of information request shows.

Offenses included driving “a commercial vehicle when it would jeopardize or likely jeopardize the safety or health of the public,” entering “inaccurate information in a record of duty status” and “falsify, mutilate or deface a record of duty status or supporting document.”

The tickets resulted in $70,811 in fines, with an additional 212 drivers facing warnings.

Federal legislation mandating the use of ELDs in place of traditional paper logbooks came into effect in June 2021. However — to allow industry leaders to adjust to the new laws and train commercial drivers — provincial and territorial officials did not begin enforcing the use of electronic logbooks until the start of 2023.

Commercial drivers crossing the Canada-U.S. border have been required to use such technology since 2017.

The most common offense among commercial drivers in Manitoba last year was for failing to install and properly mount an ELD, with 193 tickets being issued. An additional 66 drivers were fined for falsifying their hours of service.

A variety of other violations, including exceeding the maximum hours of service allowed per day, failing to produce logbook records when requested and operating with an improperly calibrated ELD, account for the remaining tickets.

According to federal regulations, a commercial truck driver cannot remain behind the wheel for more than 13 hours in a 24 hour period, and must have at least 10 hours off-duty time each day, of which eight hours must be consecutive.

At the end of each day, drivers must record their total hours on-duty, their vehicle’s odometer reading and total distance driven.

In addition to recording hours of service, ELDs can track high-risk driving behaviors, including excessive acceleration, hard braking and hard cornering.

Commercial vehicles, including semi-trailers, buses and trucks weighing more than 4,300 kilograms, were involved in 17 fatal collisions in 2021. An additional 293 people were injured in collisions with commercial vehicles, according to data from the latest Manitoba Public Insurance traffic collision statistics report.

Neither extreme fatigue nor exceeding hours of service were considered contributing factors in any of the commercial fatal collisions. Meanwhile, distracted and careless driving was the most common contributing factor in such collisions, the data shows.

According to the Manitoba Trucking Association, more than 15,000 trucks and 20,000 trailers operate within the provincial trucking industry. The province is home to 475 for-hire trucking companies (five of which are considered in Canada’s top 50 commercial trucking carriers), and roughly 4.6 per cent of Manitoba’s labour force is either directly or indirectly employed in the industry.

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca