John Offutt was killed while cycling when a cement truck ran over him. The record of the trucker who was charged — and his company — raises questions about the oversight of the entire indu
It's been six months since Jane Ferguson's husband died, but the pain still hasn't let up.
The loss has hit us much harder than I could have ever imagined," she said. The sadness we feel is a relentless part of our everyday lives."
John Offutt, Ferguson's husband of 34 years, died Nov. 20 in a collision with a cement truck while cycling on Royal York Road. The 59-year-old had recently retired from his job as a teacher in Thorncliffe Park, and was run over when the driver made a right turn into the bike lane, according to police.
Offutt's death has caused immeasurable sorrow for Ferguson and the couple's two sons, but she has another word to describe how she felt when she learned about the driving record of the man behind the wheel: sickened."
The driver, a 48-year-old professional truck operator from Oshawa named Keven Cote, was charged with careless driving causing death and making an unsafe turn in the crash that killed Offutt. The charges under the provincial Highway Traffic Act are not criminal, and are still before the courts. Cote has not been convicted.
Court records show Cote continued to drive after the fatal collision, and within four months had been charged with three more traffic offences, including operating a commercial vehicle with a major defect. In the four years leading up to Offutt's death, he was charged with at least six more Highway Traffic Act offences on four separate occasions.
According to Ministry of Transportation records, the company Cote drives for has a recent history of collisions and a poor safety rating. The carrier is one of several linked to a firm called ML Group, which declined to answer questions for this story. Cote, who is disputing the more recent charges against him, also didn't return multiple requests for comment.
The circumstances around Offutt's death raise serious questions about provincial oversight of the drivers and companies that operate heavy trucks on Ontario roads. That oversight has been criticized for failing to mandate sufficient training for truck drivers and for allowing trucks that operate on city roads to go uninspected.
Gaps in the system can have terrible consequences: statistics show crashes in Toronto involving trucks are significantly more likely to result in the death of a pedestrian or cyclist compared to other vehicles.
When our two sons were learning to drive, I told them that the steering wheel they held in their hands would undoubtedly be the most lethal weapon they ever held," Ferguson told the Star.
If a normal vehicle is like a loaded weapon, the heavy truck that killed her husband is the equivalent of an AK-47," she said. Apparently, the driver ... was never taught that lesson and still hasn't learned it."
There are more than 290,000 commercial trucks registered in Ontario, each of them weighing at least 4,500 kilograms. Although trucks make up a small minority of vehicles on the road, there is evidence that when involved in crashes with vulnerable road users they're far more likely to be deadly.
Between 2006 and 2020, there were almost 2,700 traffic collisions in Toronto that killed or seriously injured a pedestrian, according to a Star analysis of police data. Trucks were involved in just five per cent of those collisions, but accounted for 11 per cent of all pedestrian deaths. (The figures don't differentiate between heavy, medium or light-duty trucks.)
The trend was even more pronounced for cyclists. Trucks were involved in just six per cent of all serious cyclist collisions, but in 27 per cent of all cyclist deaths.
In total, 53 pedestrians and 11 cyclists were killed in crashes with trucks over the 15-year period. More than 110 pedestrians and cyclists suffered major injuries.
In a 2019 City of Toronto study based on a similar analysis, Beth-Anne Schuelke-Leech, a researcher at the University of Windsor, wrote that one factor that likely makes trucks more dangerous is the large blind spots created by the vehicles' size and drivers' position high in the cab. Their weight also means they take longer to stop.
Schuelke-Leech also noted trucks pose the unique risk of under-run." While serious crashes involving smaller vehicles are often the result of high-speed impacts, when a truck driver turns into or side-swipes a pedestrian or cyclist, the injury occurs not from the speed or momentum of the truck, but rather from the individual falling under the vehicle and getting run over," she wrote.
The result is that trucks can cause catastrophic injuries even when moving at low speeds. The cement truck in Offutt's collision was going just 20 kilometres an hour when the driver turned into his path and ran him over, according to the police collision report.
Two weeks before Offutt died, Tricia Waldron, a 67-year-old community leader in Corktown, was killed when she was hit by a cement truck driver at Cherry and Mill Streets. The driver in that crash was also making a right turn, police reported.
Two pedestrians were killed in crashes with heavy trucks just last month. One was an 82-year-old woman struck by the driver of a dump truck turning right as she crossed Danforth Avenue, according to police.
The company Cote was driving for at the time of Offutt's death is called Maple Leaf Equipment Rentals, which is registered to the ML Group concrete batching plant at 29 Judson St., in south Etobicoke.
A steady stream of trucks goes in and out of the facility, and people living in the surrounding residential neighbourhood have long warned it poses a safety risk. Although the city has reached a deal to relocate the plant, the move has not been finalized.
The police collision report lists Cote's condition at the time of the fatal crash as inattentive," and alleges he failed to yield the right of way. If convicted in the crash he could face a fine between $2,000 and $50,000, up to two years' imprisonment, and a licence suspension of up to five years. Drivers rarely receive maximum sentences when convicted of Highway Traffic Act offences, however.
In January 2021, less than two months after Offutt's death, Cote was charged with running a red light. Then in March he was charged with driving a commercial vehicle with a major defect, and failing to enter a defect in a daily inspection report. Court records show he is disputing all three charges.
In addition to those cases, in the four years leading up to Offutt's death, Cote was convicted and fined for failing to accurately complete an inspection report, disobeying a traffic light, and driving with improper tires. He was also convicted of speeding 81 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, but has appealed. Additional charges for driving without working lights and operating a commercial vehicle without displaying proof of inspection were withdrawn.
The records don't specify what type of vehicle Cote was driving at the time of each charge, but in at least some of the cases he was driving a commercial truck.
None of the charges were serious enough to result in a licence suspension, and Cote is still permitted to drive a commercial vehicle. ML Group did nothing illegal by continuing to employ him.
Stephen Laskowski, president of the Ontario Trucking Association, declined to comment specifically on Cote and ML Group's case. But he said while nothing legally prevents a carrier from hiring a driver with a long record of driving offences, most companies are so safety conscious they would rather have trucks sit idle than hire someone they think poses a risk.
However, there are companies unfortunately in our industry who will put (any) warm body in that truck if they can get insurance for them. And it's wrong. It's flat out wrong," he said.
A Ministry of Transportation spokesperson said that in general, commercial drivers who satisfy all post-conviction requirements of a driving charge are allowed to keep working. But if they receive a licence suspension of three years or more they need to reapply for their licence as though they were a new driver. The ministry also retests drivers deemed high-risk based on number of collisions and demerit points.
Ontario's commercial licensing system is designed to ensure that only qualified individuals operate vehicles, and those who are not law-abiding face stringent penalties. These penalties are among the most stringent in North America," the spokesperson said.
To ensure trucking companies operate safely, the Ministry of Transportation monitors them using records called commercial vehicle operator registrations (CVORs). All 60,000 commercial carriers operating in the province must have a CVOR, which includes a safety rating assigned by the ministry based on the company's recent history of collisions, convictions and inspection results.
Operators are assigned one of five safety ratings, from excellent to unsatisfactory. Those with the worst ratings can face sanctions including fleet size limitations or the suspension or cancellation of operating privileges. But the system is designed to allow the province to intervene if a company's rating starts to slip, and the ministry says it works with carriers to achieve positive outcomes in their on-road performance in the interest of road safety for all users."
According to a publicly available summary of Maple Leaf's CVOR, the company has a rating of conditional," which is the second lowest, just above unsatisfactory. Less than four per cent of carriers in the province have a rating of conditional or worse.
The summary covers the past two years and shows the company's fleet of 24 vehicles was involved in 10 collisions. Five of the crashes were either serious or involved an impropriety or defect attributed to the carrier or its drivers.
The ministry is aware of this company's safety record and is actively involved with this operator," a Transportation Ministry spokesperson said.
In October 2019, after 54-year-old Evangeline Lauroza was killed in a collision with a cement truck near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, Toronto city council voted to focus on heavy trucks as part of its Vision Zero road safety strategy. A city spokesperson said the municipality has started to add 360-degree cameras and more distinct backup alarms to some vehicles in its fleet, and has improved training for waste management drivers.
But responsibility for the wider trucking industry lies with the province.
Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk conducted a review of commercial vehicle oversight in 2019, and concluded the Transportation Ministry does not have fully effective and efficient processes" to implement safety programs.
Among her recommendations was that the ministry consider requiring truck drivers to undergo more training. She noted drivers of big tractor-trailers have to complete more than 100 hours of mandatory entry-level training, including 50 hours behind the wheel. But drivers of smaller heavy vehicles like cement or dump trucks merely have to take a written and road test. That's despite the fact drivers of those vehicles were involved in at-fault collisions and injuries at higher rates than drivers of tractor-trailers.
Patrick Brown, a lawyer and road safety advocate, agrees better training is needed. He said in his experience examining commercial truck drivers under oath, there is a lack of training and understanding of how to drive properly in accordance with the rules of the road," particularly in dense urban environments.
I find it alarming," he said.
Lysyk also recommended the ministry do more to ensure the safety of trucks operating on city roads. She found that about 90 per cent of commercial vehicle inspections were conducted by provincial enforcement officers, usually at stations along intercity provincial highways. But more than two-thirds of commercial vehicle collisions involving injury or death occur on city roads, where trucks are more likely to interact with pedestrians and cyclists. Local haulers" that mostly operate within city limits are likely to avoid inspection, she found.
The ministry accepted the auditor's recommendations, and says it is studying their implementation.
Data analysis by Andrew Bailey
Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation for the Star. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr