Article content continued

Nevertheless, the notion that anyone who passes the tests can drive anywhere in any driving conditions with any size load without taking any training is unsettling.

Yes, you read that correctly. Withoutany formal training requirements.

While your 16-year-old kid has had to go through a learner’s permit process and endure a graduated period limiting everything from the number of people allowed in the driver’s vehicle to zero blood alcohol content, there are no restrictions for new Class 1/air brake licences.

Again, context is everything here, so let’s be fair to the licensing system as it has existed for years.

Roughly 90 per cent of those seeking semi-trailer licences — including farmers moving their grain — do go to the trouble and expense of taking at least some formal, professional driver training that can cost more than $2,000, according to SGI.

And while SGI Minister Joe Hargrave may have badly fumbled in making his point Monday, there is validity to the notion that long-haul truckers do face greater challenges driving the B.C. Coquihalla Highway in the winter or Ontario’s 401 Highway that sees 420,000 vehicles a day. If Hargrave’s argument is that farmers shouldn’t necessarily have to face the same rigours as long-haul truck drivers on the road for 365 days a year, the numbers bear this out.

Between 2010 and 2017, there was an average of 1,189 collisions per year involving semi-trailer units in Saskatchewan. (These numbers do not reflect who was at fault — only that it was a collision involving a semi-trailer.) Of those, an average of a mere 86 collisions a year involved farm-plated semi-trailers. Of interest, an average of 439 collisions a year involved out-of-province plated semis.