Friday, Feb. 23, 2001

Points to make:

1. This affects everyone. Even if you don’t drive yourself, you expect the roads to be safe. Road safety is also safety for cyclists and pedestrians. You expect your family and friends to get to their destinations unharmed. You depend on roads to get your groceries to the stores, your newspaper to your doorstep, your garbage collected. Even if you never get behind the wheel, this issue affects you personally.
    
2. The issue is safety.

Bill 137 allows the government to shed responsibility for all aspects of road user safety.

If there is one thing we want from our government, it’s an assurance that our roads are safe.

What’s involved in road safety? Just look around you:

• Safe drivers – who have passed tests to ensure they are competent behind the wheel.
• Safe vehicles – which is why older vehicles have to pass certain tests.
• Truck safety – no flying wheels. No insecure loads falling off at 100 kilometers and hour. Good brakes. When the Ministry does a truck safety blitz it consistently finds a huge percentage of violations. Left to their own devices, a lot of trucking companies will cut corners on safety to enhance their profits. Higher gasoline prices and just-in-time delivery add to the pressure to cheat on safety.
• Driver safety – truckers who aren’t exhausted by driving beyond the legal limits and their own personal limits. Sleepy drivers should not be controlling many tons of hurtling steel in the lane beside you.
• Safe designs – roads that are designed for their speed limits that can accommodate the traffic they are asked to carry.
• Safe signage – road signs that are clear and make their point quickly so drivers get the information without taking their eyes off the road and traffic for more than a flash.

3. Public services make roads safe.

• Public accountability and public enforcement of standards are our best guarantee of safe roads.
• Public services are less susceptible to corruption and bribery, both of which are regular temptations to the ministry’s enforcement and examination staff.
• Public services aren’t trying to squeeze a profit out of the operation. If the job needs doing, it gets done. There is no incentive to cut corners to satisfy the shareholders.
• Public services aren’t driven by the quarterly statement. They don’t lay off hundreds of needed staff to drive up the dividend, regardless of the impact on the service they provide. Public services are there to serve the public. It may seem obvious, but it’s worth remembering.
• Public services are accountable to the public. If the situation changes – a new hazard emerges – public services can respond. A private contractor isn’t going to take on new responsibilities that aren’t part of the original deal. As an example, when flying truck tires started killing innocent motorists on Highway 401, the Ministry of Transportation reacted appropriately by hiring 100 more inspectors to enforce the rules on truck safety. The flying tires stopped. Would a private contractor have taken responsibility that way?

4. It’s about safety

We’ve learned some things in the past year – since Walkerton.

One of the things we have learned is that contracting out important safety work has a price. The price doesn’t come in dollars and cents. It comes in health and lives.

If it is important for our safety to have a service continue, we must keep control over that service. We have to keep it public.

Do you want the slipshod accountability that killed seven in Walkerton and made thousands miserably ill to apply to the roads you drive on? Do you trust a private operator to do the work with you in mind rather than the pressure from the shareholders?

What’s your bottom line on road safety – getting to your destination unhurt? Or a better return on the dollar for the shareholders?

5. This affects us all. We all use the roads. We all need them to be safe.

 

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Ontario Public Service Employees Union, 100 Lesmill Rd. Toronto, ON M3B 3P8  (416) 443-8888  www.opseu.org