(SUDBURY, ON) – Members of the Sudbury Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in partnership with members from the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) will be working together for Operation Corridor, an important annual highway safety initiative that raises awareness among commercial vehicle drivers about safe operation and maintenance of transport trucks and other large commercial vehicles.

The initiative begins at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 and ends at 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 18, 2014.

During last year’s Operation Corridor initiative, OPP officers across the province laid a total of 267 charges which include 86 for Speeding, 55 Seatbelt charges, 11 Speed Limiter charges, 111 Equipment related charges, one Impaired Driving charge and 3 other Criminal Code charges. Fifty-one commercial motor vehicles were taken out-of-service during the 24-hour province-wide initiative.

Commercial vehicles have the potential to cause significant damage in collisions, endangering the lives of the many people who travel Ontario’s busiest highways. Last year (2013) the Ontario Provincial Police investigated more than 8,400 collisions that involved large commercial vehicles and sadly, 68 of those collisions resulted in someone dying. In the previous year (2012), the OPP investigated almost 13,500 commercial vehicle collisions and the number of fatal crashes in this category reached a five-year high at 99.

Operation Corridor is an excellent opportunity to educate commercial vehicle drivers about the importance of having a flawless safety checklist. When you consider the high volume of large, load-bearing commercial trucks on highways each hour of each day, it is imperative that those who drive them are 100 percent compliant with this checklist because it will ultimately save lives.

Find out more about the OPP Provincial Traffic Safety Program go to: http://www.opp.ca/ecms/index.php?id=51