TRUCK SAFETY AND SAFETY REGULATIONS

This paper examines differences in truck collision rates among provinces and territories in Canada, and also between Canada and the U.S. Collision rates are one objective measure of highway safety; however, what collision rates do not reveal is why some jurisdictions have more or less collisions than others. Many factors are involved, and it has not been possible to develop highway safety models sufficiently robust to explain these differences. One factor that is thought to have a major impact on highway safety is the number of truck safety regulations in a given state, province, or territory. This paper focuses on truck safety regulations as a measure of overall highway and/or truck safety, and attempts to evaluate how the effectiveness of these truck safety regulations can be determined.