The City of Thunder Bay is retraining some of the drivers of its commercial vehicles over their safety records.

The Ministry of Transportation has lowered the city's commercial vehicle operator's registration — or CVOR — safety rating to "conditional" due to concerns with the number of preventable accidents and Highway Traffic Act violations involving those vehicles, as well as issues with paperwork, said Jim Suffak, the city's fleet manager.

"We're going through a process of re-instruction, and correcting some issues that we see on our CVOR record for the type of preventable collisions and Highway Traffic Act infractions that have been adding to our infraction points," he said. "For whatever reasons, there's a number of infractions and collisions that have been attached to our CVOR over the last 24 months that have caused a large increase."

Suffak didn't have exact numbers of incidents involving commercial city vehicles.

The city's CVOR covers 190 city commercial vehicles, including those used by transit and Tbaytel, weighing more than 4,500 kilograms, Suffak said, adding that emergency vehicles are not affected.

The program essentially assigns demerit points for infractions (points stay on a carrier's record for 24 months). Based on the carrier's safety performance, they're assigned to one of five rating levels.

"Conditional" is the second-lowest rating, behind "unsatisfactory."

The MTO website states that an "unsatisfactory rating is in effect during the period of suspension or cancellation of the carrier's operating privileges."

Karen Martin, president of CUPE Local 87, said the union — which represents many of the 450 employees who drive commercial city vehicles — is working with the city to get things back in order.

"We're working together," Martin said. "It is not something we're very happy with, but we are working with administration and human resources to try to recitify the problem."