A one day safety blitz by the OPP and Ministry of Transportation targeting commercial motor vehicles has seen 760 charges laid against the drivers.
Sergeant Carlo Berardi says the number is way up over last year when the same one day blitz resulted in 537 charges.
Berardi says there was a dramatic increase with offenses in quite a few areas over 2017.
“Speeding was way up,” Berardi said.
“This year we had 28 compared to six last year. Other significant rises were in hours of service; eight this year compared to six last year. We also had five follow too closely incidents compared to one last year.”
Berardi says the 24 hour blitz, which began last Wednesday at 6:00am, saw 1,500 large trucks stopped compared to 700 last year.
One of the vehicles involved a trailer becoming unhitched from the tractor unit.
“The king pin wasn’t fully engaged and he lost his load,” Berardi said.
“Thankfully it was at a slow speed and not a higher speed with other traffic when it happened. Who knows what could have been.”
The trailer disconnected from the tractor pulling it right in front of an OPP cruiser that was part of Operation Corridor by the Highway 11 and 17 Bypass.
