TORONTO – The CBC and some of its regional affiliates are making much hay about U.S. data that shows 4,800 Canadian carriers violated hours of service and logbook rules in 2009 and 2010.

In a report headlined "Canadian truckers violate U.S. safety rules: Canada behind U.S. in embracing electronic monitoring of drivers’ hours" the CBC reports that thousands of "carriers" violated "key parts" of hours of service and logbook rules in the last two years.

Out of those, "hundreds" of carriers were flagged and received "alerts" for exceeding hours-of-service related thresholds as part of the new Safety Measurement System (SMS).

(Todaystrucking.com did a province-by-province search on the SMS for Canadian carriers that were tagged with an ‘alert" and came up with a total of 200 carriers).

The report used those figures to imply that Canada is behind the U.S. in fatigue-related safety.

However, as David Bradley of the Canadian Trucking Alliance pointed out in the article, the 4,800-figure undoubtedly includes a large number of minor or clerical HOS infractions, which "have no bearing on fatigue" or indicate any sort of safety risk.

As well, it’s highly likely that by "carriers" CBC is referring to 4,800 individual drivers or unit operators over the last two years rather than specific carrier companies. (We’re awaiting confirmation on that by a CBC producer).

With roughly between 25 percent and a third of Canada’s 250,000 drivers occasionally crossing the border, the hours-of-service violation rate cited by CBC is not at all extraordinary and consistent with U.S. rates.

Arguably, out-of-service (OOS) figures related to HOS violations are a more reliable indicator of possible serious safety violations.

Less than 3 percent of Canadian drivers are typically placed OOS for logbook-related violations at annual North American Roadcheck blitzes. (that’s slightly better than American driver rates).

And while the report quotes "driver fatigue expert" Alison Smiley saying that lack of sleep is a "major" concern in deadly truck accidents, U.S. DOT data shows fatigue is a factor in only 1.4 percent of truck-involved fatalities.

While defending truckers’ safety record here and abroad, Bradley did note that there’s always room for improvement.

He said that eliminating paper logs by adopting a universal EOBR mandate in Canada would reduce HOS-related violations.

While the CTA has publicly lobbied for a universal EOBR rule In Canada for years, American regulators got out of the gates first with a proposed rule that would affect most interstate truckers.