Manitoba crash highlights safety concerns about Canada's highways and trucking industry
Manitoba crash highlights safety concerns about Canada's highways and trucking industry
Long-haul truckers often work grueling schedules with few breaks and face pressures that place their safety and that of others at risk.
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Further to this headline, which is unnecessarily unfair to truckers: in this case, it looks like the bus pulled out in front of the truck who had the right of way. There was a dashcam in the truck. According to the police, they seized the dashcam on the scene. No one knows why the driver of the bus pulled into the trucks lane at that time.
This is not Humboldt 2.0. Still a tragedy, but different lessons will be learned this time.
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I don't think the headline is meant to criticize truckers, but rather the industry and its current regulations. Even if the truck driver had the right of way, it's fair to analyze the industry in an article, especially considering the number of highway collisions involving semi-trucks and the high mortality of such accidents.
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How about fewer roads and an actual train network?
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Yes please (see username)
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You'd get my vote.
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I was looking at a rail map of Saskatchewan not too long ago, and one could travel to most places in the province on rail if there were passenger service. Not surprising, given that was the primary mode of transport when most of the communities were first founded.
I doubt it would ever happen, but an actually useful passenger rail network with decent public transit at destinations would go a long way in reducing road infrastructure costs, especially in this province with a very high amount of road per capita. It's unfortunate we've spent nearly the last century completely infatuated with the automobile. One can only imagine what our towns and cities would look like if development practices weren't solely focused on ease of vehicle movement.
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Manitoba has some wildly bad infrastructure. I'd swear at least half of the traffic lights on the trans Canada must be in Manitoba.
Just high speed 100km/h highway then suddenly traffic light.
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Uh. Warnings in advance of lights. Prepare to stop flashing lights. And intersection speed limits at 80km/h.
The highways you're complaining about are the federally funded highways, like the TransCanada. Manitoba doesn't have millions of taxpayers. We do what we can.
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Look at this shit
How the hell did we think it was a good idea to let rural roads intersect with a highway, instead of having an overpass/underpass?
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Because money. Building an overpass at every intersection on the TransCanada highway will cost literally a hundred billion dollars. The US has far more taxpayers per mile of road. We can barely afford to keep our roads surfaced.
The solution, of course, is fewer roads or more taxpayers. We've elected to go for more taxpayers with aggressive immigration policies. But it will take decades, if not longer, before these intersections all have overpasses.
And even when it happens, the complaints will just move from the TransCanada to whatever other highway doesn't get have overpasses.
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That image is so haunting. It's sad the amount of high-profile bus crashes have occurred on Canadian highways over the years. The Boys in Red accident in 2008, the Humboldt Broncos crash in 2018, and now this.
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