When Paul Harvey’s colleagues climb into their rigs each morning and head off to work, they’re literally putting their life on the line. They’re not cops, or firefighters or electrical power line installers or bomb disposal experts: they’re garbage truck workers. “It is crazy out there,” said Harvey, the safety co-ordinator for Emterra, the contracting company that handles curbside pickup of garbage and recycling across Niagara for the Region. “People are just not paying attention,” he said. “It’s incredible.”
Every day, Emterra’s 110 staff jump on and off or in and out of the company’s fleet of 65 to 70 trucks up to 1,200 times, with cars and trucks whizzing around them. Each day, those trucks can log up to 13,000 kilometres on average.
Harvey joined Regional Chair Alan Caslin, Ontario Waste Management Association (OWMA) acting chief executive officer Peter Hargreave, Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris and Walker Industries executive vice-president Mike Watt in issuing a call at the Walker yard on the Thorold-Niagara Falls border on Friday for the province to adopt Harris’ private member’s bill to make it mandatory for drivers to slow down and move over for garbage trucks and snowplows and sanding trucks in Ontario.
Similar legislation already exists requiring drivers to move safely over when emergency vehicles are on the side of the road, and that same protection was recently extended to tow truck drivers. Hargreave said after two years of lobbying the province has yet to extend that protection to garbage truck and snow plow workers. “That’s wrong,” he said. “Waste collection workers have one of the most dangerous jobs in this country. The risk is real.”
Harris, who planned to reintroduce his private member’s bill at Queen’s Park after it died on the table when Premier Kathleen Wynne prorogued the legislature in September, said the lives of garbage truck and plow workers are worth no less than emergency officials or tow truck drivers.
“They need to go home each and every night to their loved ones,” he said. “There’s a lot of close calls. “It should be common sense to slow down and move over (but) unfortunately it isn’t.”
Watt said there are too many close calls happening in Niagara involving distracted and speeding drivers putting garbage truck and plow drivers in harm’s way.“We feel for the guys out on the street,” he said. “It’s incredibly important.”
Harris’ bill would impose a penalty of three demerit points and a $400 fine for drivers who refuse to put a safe distance between themselves and garbage truck or plows.
To read the full story, visit http://www.niagarathisweek.com/news-story/6911861-slow-down-move-over-rules-urged-for-garbage-trucks-snow-plows/.