Back in late July, Speakers Corner was contacted about several problems with the roll out of a new digital inspection program for heavy duty diesel vehicles in Ontario which had a start date of August 1.
At the time, several mechanics, tasked with ensuring large trucks, buses and RVs are safe to drive on Ontario roads, said they were still waiting for the digital tablets needed to perform the new DriveON inspections by the deadline.
“A lot of people are concerned. They’re asking what is happening,” Steve Shipton, who owns Shipton’s Mechanical Repair in Pickering, told us in July.
After our initial report, The Ministry of Transportation extended the deadline to give the shops time to receive the tablets from Parsons Inc., the private company hired by the Ministry to run the program.
The new system was up and running at the end of August. We went back to Shipton to see how it’s going.
“Since we last spoke, we did receive the government tablets, and after a little bit of growing pains and adjustment, the system works quite well,” he told us.
Plans for the DriveON program were launched back in 2022. According to the MTO, it combines the heavy-duty diesel vehicle emissions testing program and the Motor Vehicle Inspection Stations (MVIS) program into one digital inspection program.
Under the law, any commercial vehicle in Ontario weighing over 4,500 kg is required to have a Commercial Vehicle Operators Registration (CVOR) which requires an annual inspection. If the vehicle passes, the driver or company is issued a Safety Standards Inspection Sticker on the windshield. But in the past, those inspections were left entirely up to the mechanic or shop that performed them, without much oversight, which lead to major safety concerns.
“There are shops out there that would perform subpar inspections and hand out the old stickers even though trucks weren’t safe to be on the road,” Shipton told us. “There was a lot of fraud happening and this program is meant to combat that.”
Under the new system, the inspection process is done the same way but supporting photos and documents have to be uploaded online by the mechanic performing the inspection.
Auditors at Parsons Inc., then monitor the process and only after all the proper steps are taken, are mechanics allowed to print passing yellow stickers, which come with a QR code.
“The system verifies the VIN, the mileage. It’s almost next to impossible now to counterfeit one of these safety inspections,” Shipton said. “It’s going to be very difficult for someone to copy these new stickers, because they’re actually printed right on site using special paper.”
But it’s still not without complaints — the process does take more time and costs trucking companies more money for yearly inspections.
“Because of the process, It does extend the time to do these inspections and it varies depending on the vehicle we’re looking at.”
But it’s a cost Shipton says, in the end, is worth it for everyone on the road.
“For public safety, number one, it’s going to take a lot of junk off the road. Everyone’s on the same page now, whether they want to be or not.”
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