STAFF PHOTO/JOE FANTAUZZI
Debbie Virggoe, widow of truck hero David Virgoe, affixes a poster to the back of a truck cab Thursday to start the aggressive driving blitzkrieg by public safety experts across the region.
Regional News
September 12, 2008 12:54 PM
Joe Fantauzzi, Staff Writer
Not far from a seemingly endless stream of vehicles, hurtling up and down Hwy. 400 past a service station in Vaughan, Debbie Virgoe made a plea for you to do something about aggressive driving.
Ms Virgoe, the widow of trucker David Virgoe, 48, who was killed while driving a transport truck on Hwy. 400 near Hwy. 89 last June, was part of a push Thursday to encourage you to call police if you see an aggressive driver.
Mr. Virgoe died after he rolled his truck into a ditch while swerving to avoid three vehicles weaving in and out of traffic. He has been called a hero for his actions.
“Awareness is really important to us and the public support is important,” Ms Virgoe said at the service station in northern Vaughan, south of King Road. “We can all help make our roads safer; the men and women who work on our roads every day have the right to a safe workplace environment. I do not want to see this happen to another family.”
The campaign, which has the backing of the provincial Ministry of Transportation, Ontario Provincial Police, the Ontario Trucking Association and the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, is to include the distribution to truck drivers of 2,000 decals that encourage your call to police. The decals are designed to be affixed to transport trucks.
“I’ll cut right to the chase — traffic safety is a shared responsibility and it takes all of us being very conscientious,” OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said. “We no longer call these crashes accidents. They are a caused-occurrence.”
There has been a 33.5 per cent decrease in the number of fatalities on OPP-patrolled highways thus far this year, compared to 2007, Commissioner Fantino said.
“That is, to me, a very significant outcome,” he said. He added traffic fatalities are, for the most part, preventable.
Almost half of all deaths on the province’s roads are linked to speeding or loss of control, according to transport minister Jim Bradley.
“Confronting dangerous street racing and aggressive driving is a priority for our government,” Minister Bradley said. “We’re asking motorists to have a passenger call 911 to report aggressive driving they observe or to pull over safely to the side of the road and call in the licence number of the aggressive driver.”
Since September 2007, more than 8,000 thousand speeding drivers have had their driver’s licence suspended for a week and their vehicles impounded under the province’s extreme driving legislation, according to Minister Bradley.
The idea of drivers calling police when they spot aggressive behaviour on the highways appeared to sit well with motorist Grove Bennett, who had stopped at the service station Thursday morning.
“For what I understand, I think it’s a great plan,” Mr. Bennett said. “If it can help the police force to reduce accidents or collisions that are out there or drowsy drivers, I think it’s fantastic,”
He added he feels nervous for the truck drivers and innocent bystanders when he sees aggressive driving.
While collisions involving trucks often receive a lot of attention, most are not the fault of the truck driver but rather car drivers and motorcyclists, Ontario Trucking Association President David Bradley said.
“Aggressive driving is a major and a growing contributor to crashes involving trucks, involving all vehicles,” he said. “If you ask any truck driver today, they will tell you that aggressive driving by motorists is getting worse — it’s creating a hazard for all road users, including truckers.”