Five commercial vehicles from construction sites near where a 14-year-old Burnaby girl was hit and killed by a dump truck in May failed police safety inspections and were taken off the road last week, according to the officer who heads up Burnaby RCMP’s commercial vehicle enforcement.
Burnaby RCMP and partner agencies from around the Lower Mainland conducted a commercial vehicle enforcement blitz at 10th Avenue and 18th Street, where two major construction projects are currently underway: the City of Burnaby’s Rosemary Brown Arena and Ledingham McAllister’s Azure at Southgate City project.
Byrne Creek Community School Grade 8 student Muska Behzad was killed at 11th Avenue and 15th Street by a dump truck coming from the Southgate City site on May 5.
She had been on her way home from school.
“We’re doing that enforcement being that it’s close to school again,” Burnaby RCMP Const. Kevin Connolly said. “We’re doing that enforcement to target trucks coming to and from the construction sites up by 11th there just off of 18th, which was where the poor young girl lost her life due to the dump truck there. That was the best place that we could set up to be grabbing trucks coming to and from those construction sites.”
Connolly said officers inspected a total of 32 trucks and took 26 out of service for safety violations.
But not all the vehicles inspected were from the construction sites.
“We were of course getting others because naturally, being on 10th, there is a lot of through traffic, but we were also still able to grab some of the trucks coming to and from those construction sites,” Connolly said.
Five vehicles coming and going from the two construction projects failed inspections, according to Connolly, but he said he didn’t collect information on which specific site each of the trucks came from.
“Just five total from the construction sites,” he said.
Connolly said police rely on guidelines set out by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, which has compiled a list of “out of service” violations – defects that make trucks unsafe enough to be ordered off the road.
Each of the vehicles taken off the road on 10th Avenue last Monday had at least one of those violations.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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