I'm amazed how many rollovers there are per month on the 400 series Highways
So, post your monthly stats on that please, for there are not many, but when there IS one you want to believe it's all over the media (and yes, it hoses up traffic) so people think it's an "epidemic" when in reality it only happens once every few months. When weighted against the hundreds of thousands of trucks that pass safely around and through the city in the meantime the statistics are infinitesimally low, actually.
Fact is countless passenger vehicles rollover in Toronto and the province as a whole on a daily/monthly/yearly basis, but once again, the media isn't interested in it so you'll hear about it in passing on 680 News or whatever, but that's about it..but 1 truck rolls over (yes, often a result of stupidity, but often the result of someone else triggering it as well) and the media is all over it like a fat kid on a Smartie.
One just rolled over 3 days ago actually, but I'd venture to say if you asked 1000 people the overwhelming majority wouldn't even be aware of it unless they were stuck in the traffic mess. But if a truck rolled over
everyone knows even if it didn't effect them at all.
So, in short, keep things in perspective. The figures are skewed by public perception.
and how many trucks were taken off the road the other week in the MTO blitz I read about.
Keep in mind these are
targeted blitzes. If they targeted every car on the road that
looked blatantly unkempt you'd see just as high (likely higher) statistics for passenger vehicles. Accordingly, it skews the figures and the media runs with it saying "90% of trucks inspected failed!", but it doesn't take into consideration the targeted nature of the inspection - tens or hundreds of thousands of other trucks that were clearly well kept and operated by good fleets were just waved on through to continue their day. When you take those trucks into consideration
the numbers suddenly don't look anywhere near as sensational,
down in the low single percentage points which is the typical out of service ratio for normal enforcement, not "blitzes".
The media is of course not interested in non-sensational mundane stuff like that because the public doesn't eat it up and sell newspapers and website hits.