Safety of commercial vehicles questioned after serious crashes in Edmonton

There are calls for something to be done about commercial vehicle safety following two incidents this week where wheels flew off trucks and crushed other vehicles, one that resulted in the death of an Edmonton school teacher.

Cody Horvath passed the aftermath the scene where a dual wheel slammed into the windshield of a commercial truck on Anthony Henday Drive Tuesday morning.

"I had to stop and pull over on Lessard Road just to take a breath and go, 'Oh my god. I can't believe I just saw that,'" he told CBC News on Thursday.

"It hits home when something like this happens, because ... where my incident happened on the Anthony Henday, which was the southwest leg where all the construction is going on, is where these accidents have also happened.

Horvath suffered facial fractures and had to undergo major reconstructive surgery after a 5½ kilogram chunk of metal went crashed through his windshield while driving on Anthony Henday Drive in June.

The object appeared to be a bumper stop from a commercial vehicle, he said.

He continues to recover and has limited vision in his right eye. No one has been charged in the incident.

"When you leave to go to work or leave to go to the store, you're planning on coming home," Horvath said. "There is nothing worse than knowing that someone's not going to come home because of something that was preventable."

Troy Mettlewsky, who lives in the area where teacher Meghan Weis was killed Wednesday, worries the incidents are part of a growing problem.

"There's been a bit of a challenge over the last two or three years now with the volume of commercial vehicle traffic coming through the area," he said. "Unfortunately … there's been very little that's been done."

Sgt. Dave Beattie is in charge of the six member Commercial Vehicle Inspection Unit with the Edmonton Police Service.

This month, the unit has noted 451 violations and issued 159 tickets during 151 vehicle inspections.

"Ninety-three of those were placed out of service — that's actually 62 per cent of the vehicles we checked," Beattie said. "When we talk about out of service, we're talking about vehicles that are technically dangerous to be on the road."

Issues like a cracked windshield is unlikely to result in a ticket or the vehicle being taken out of service, he said.

"However, if we find a vehicle that is carrying a load down the highway and there's no straps on that load, are we going to give a ticket? Absolutely," he said. "That's the load that's going to come off and fall on the car next to it at a set of traffic lights and kill someone."

Numbers for September weren't much better with 48 per cent of the 235 vehicles inspected being taken out of service.

Beattie has an idea as to why those numbers are so high.

"The downturn in the economy is causing some companies to cut corners," he said. "Things are being overlooked in order for these companies to survive."

An investigation is underway to determine if the incident that resulted in Weis's death was driver error or a mechanical issue, Beattie said.

"If it means that we need to look at the legislation in the province, or even nationally to say, 'there was an issue with a mechanical component, we need to change this because this could happen again', then obviously those are steps we'll take," he said.

"The last thing we want is for someone else to have to go through what they're going through right now with what happened [Wednesday]."