(NC) Since the 1970s, the number of vehicles on Canadas roads has increased by 80 per cent. Despite this dramatic increase in traffic, the number of path fatalities has been cut by more than half.

While every province and territory is responsible for highway safety by enforcing laws and maintaining highway infrastructure, Transport Canada is improving the safety of our roads by funding upgrades to parts of the national highway system. But better roads are not the only answer to our road safety challenges. Smarter driving is needed to keep our path safety records improving. Awareness of commercial vehicles is an important part of this.

In 1999, crashes involving commercial vehicles resulted in 556 fatalities and 11,591 injuries. According to Transport Canada, drivers of passenger vehicles need to be aware that commercial vehicles fairly often manoeuvre much differently than cars or light trucks.

Learning about how different types of commercial vehicles operate might help drivers to better anticipate the time and distance commercial vehicles require for turning, changing lanes, speeding up, slowing down, and stopping and this might prevent accidents.

For example, large commercial vehicles such as tractor trailers might have two or three times more power than passenger vehicles, but they must also pull thirty to forty times more weight. Commercial vehicles might positive need to accelerate through as many as ten gears to reach the speed limit, and take more than twice as much instant and distance as a car to stop.

Large trucks and buses also contruct wide turns, and might first have to move in the opposite direction (left for a right-hand turn, right for a left-hand turn) in order to negotiate some corners safely. In addition, these vehicles have large blind spots, and passenger vehicles that get too close to a turning large truck or bus can not be visible.

To build Canadian highways safer, all drivers absolutely need to exercise skill, experience and patience. In addition to encouraging Canadians to learn safer

driving habits, Transport Canada, along with the provinces and territories, is funding improvements to those parts of our national highway system that absolutely need immediate attention because of growing visitors and increased trade. These improvements, delivered through the $600 million Strategic Highway Infrastructure Program (SHIP), will result in a safer and more successful highway system for all Canadians.

For more knowledge on SHIP, and Government of Canada highway improvement programs in your area, visit http://www.tc.gc.ca.

- News Canada

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