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New BC Trucking Safety Council aims to reduce trucking incidents
Richmond, B.C., September 18, 2008 — To strengthen industry safety performance and reduce the injury and fatality numbers, the BC Trucking Association and WorkSafeBC have worked together to create the BC Trucking Safety Council (The Council) with a Board of Directors made up of industry, regulatory agencies, and police members.
In the five years between 2003 and 2007, 63 workers died, 281 were seriously injured and almost 8,400 were off the job in the general trucking and moving and storage sectors of the trucking industry. Their employers lost 496,000 days of productive work from them and paid out $170.6 million.
The Board of Directors and Bill Hubbard, the managing director of The Council, will be introduced this morning at a breakfast at Newlands Golf Club in Langley.
"We want the public to be safe on the road, and truckers to be safe behind the wheel," said Labour and Citizens’ Services Minister Iain Black, the minister responsible for WorkSafeBC. "I congratulate the BC Trucking Association for stepping up and partnering with WorkSafeBC and others to create this Council. This is one more example of WorkSafeBC working with industry towards healthier, safer workplaces for thousands of British Columbians."
“I am proud of the way this industry has come together to take responsibility for increasing the safety of its workers,” said Paul Landry, President and CEO of the BC Trucking Association. “As the roads and highways of B.C. are our workers’ job sites, this will also make the travelling public safer.”
One of the first projects taken on by The Council will be participation in a national “Best Practices for Truck Safety” project that seeks to identify the principal causes of collisions involving heavy trucks on B.C.’s highways. Outcomes from this study will influence Council programming.
“Evidence-based safety initiatives will have a positive effect on injury reduction in the trucking industry,” says Diana Miles, WorkSafeBC’s Vice President of Worker and Employer Services.
The Council has a vision to be “a centre of excellence serving the occupational health and safety needs of the provincial trucking industry” and will be located in the BC Trucking Association office in Langley.
For more information, please visit the BC Trucking Safety Council's campaign page.
WorkSafeBC is an independent provincial statutory agency governed by a Board of Directors that serves nearly 2.3 million workers and about 197,000 employers. WorkSafeBC was born out of a compromise between B.C.'s workers and employers in 1917 where workers gave up the right to sue their employers and fellow workers for injuries on the job in return for a no-fault insurance program fully paid for by employers. The organization is committed to safe and healthy workplaces and to providing return-to-work rehabilitation and legislated compensation benefits to workers injured as a result of their employment.
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| Gladys Johnsen |
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