U.S. Department of Transportation
Office of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
www.dot.gov/affairs/briefing.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FHWA 49-97
Contact: Stan Hamilton
Monday, August 25, 1997 Trooper from Ontario is
Top Commercial Vehicle Inspector
An Ontario trooper was judged the top commercial motor vehicle inspector in a 5-day
annual international competition that ended Saturday in Minneapolis. Transportation Enforcement Officer Ernest G. Larocque of St.
Catharines, Ontario, was one of
51 competitors representing the states, Canadian provinces and Mexico who competed in the
event testing the ability of inspectors to detect mechanical defects and other vehicle and driver
safety hazards. Winners were also named in four other categories -- hazardous material inspection, won by
Missouri inspector Donald Hardway; driver inspection, Illinois trooper Mark W.
Ashbrook; truck
inspection, Connecticut inspector Ernest Galante; and motor coach inspection, Iowa motor
vehicle enforcement officer Chris Boswell. Earlier, the winner of an essay contest on the
importance of commercial vehicle inspection was Martin M. Thomsen, an inspector from High
River, Alberta. "Safety is President Clinton's highest transportation priority," said U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Rodney E. Slater. "Inspections, which total more than 2 million a year in the
United States, keep potentially unsafe commercial vehicles and drivers off the road." The Department's Federal Highway Administration, along with the Commercial Vehicle
Safety Alliance, the American Trucking Associations and the American Bus Association,
sponsored the fifth-annual competition. Slater said the competition underscores what these and some 5,000 other state enforcement
officers do every day in their important roadside vehicle and driver safety checks. # # #
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