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Truck that killed girl unfit for road: inspector

City vehicle had bald tires, loose wheel, malfunctioning brakes

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Nunavut's only vehicles safety inspector says the RCMP have made the streets of Iqaluit - and arguably the entire territory - more dangerous by dropping a charge against a city driver.

Tom Bragard's comments come in the wake of the police and Crown decision to drop a charge against a City of Iqaluit driver accused of operating a sewage truck unfit for the road. The driver was charged after the truck he was driving hit and killed a four-year-old girl crossing Apex Road this past April.

After the charge was dropped on Nov. 3, the driver admitted the truck was a replacement for his regular vehicle, and was not in ideal working condition.

Bragard, who inspected the vehicle right after the accident, said the truck's condition was far from ideal. His inspection report, which the city and the territorial government has refused to release, shows that the truck's condition made it illegal to drive.

He said one wheel was loose, two tires were bald, and only one of the truck's six air brakes was working properly. According to Bragard, the overused tires were enough to legally obligate the driver to leave the truck in the garage for repairs.

"There were glaring errors and he decided to go out and do his run anyway," Bragard said.

While Bragard agrees with police that the driver could have done nothing to prevent the accident, he condemned the decision to drop the charge.

In Bragard's view, dropping the charge will slow his efforts to convince the territorial government to improve Nunavut's Motor Vehicles Act, which was inherited from the Northwest Territories. Under the current legislation, the owner cannot be charged for putting an unsafe vehicle on the road. Only the driver can be charged.

That means, unlike in the rest of the country, a company in Nunavut using unsafe vehicles can't be held accountable - only the driver can.

Bragard argues the City of Iqaluit should be charged for having an unsafe sewage truck on the road in April - but the city can't be charged without a change in legislation. He adds that change will only come if he has charges against drivers to prove that there's a problem with the law.

He says the police, who also lamented the restrictions in the Motor Vehicles Act, have taken away that key to changing the law.

"You have to show them [the government] that the system is broken first, to be able to fix it," Bragard said. "If you have nothing showing that it's broken, how can you possibly fix it? I have to be able to prove that the system isn't working."

In a recent interview, police admitted they wanted to charge the city, and not the driver.

Const. Wilfred Jephson, who is now handling the case, said the Motor Vehicles Act didn't permit police investigators to charge the city.

"They couldn't lay a charge against the town, that was why he [the driver] was the one charged," Jephson said. "He wasn't purposefully targeted, but because he was under the law, the driver, he was the one who was supposed to responsible for it."

Jephson said the decision to drop the charge came after it became clear from witness testimony that the driver wouldn't have been able to avoid hitting and killing the girl, even if the truck was in top condition.

The case is closed, according to Jephson, and no further charges are being considered.

Bragard said these efforts to avoid blaming the truck driver for the accident are blocking authorities from pursuing a more systemic problem with the city.

Since January 2001, Bragard has reported that many trucks and other vehicles he inspected in the city garage were so poorly maintained that he barred them from going on the road.

He estimates the city's repeated violations of road safety standards come from having unskilled drivers, not enough skilled mechanics, and communication problems between the two.

The whole incident has left the driver, Maurice Lachance, feeling like he is stuck in the middle of a political tug of war between the city and the police.

"They [the police] wanted to attack the town through me ... for [not maintaining] their trucks," he said.

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