Sandra McCulloch
Times Colonist
October 03, 2008

Police stopped sagging, two-seat vehicle on Pat Bay Highway; workers were crammed in with their tools.

Thirteen construction workers and their tools crammed into a Chevrolet van built for two passengers was "a huge tragedy waiting for a place to happen," a police spokesman said yesterday.

Worksafe B.C. and the Integrated Road Safety Unit are investigating an incident a week ago when a cargo van was stopped on the Patricia Bay Highway by a member of the Integrated Road Safety Unit. The incident has sparked fears that the housing boom on Vancouver Island has led to widespread violations of occupational health and safety regulations that could be endangering workers.

On Sept. 26, a road safety unit officer checked the van and found two of the men were seated in the front passenger seats. Nine of the workers were on three old vehicle bench seats in the back. The last two workers "were scrunched in literally on top of some of the others," said a police press release.

Inside the leased van "were a bunch of junky old car seats ... that had been screwed onto a bloody piece of plywood and thrown in the back of the van," said road safety unit spokesman Sgt. Ross Elliott.

The seats were insecure to the point of being dangerous. In a collision, "these men would be human projectiles ... smashing their heads on the roof or whatever," said Elliott.

There were no seatbelts in the additional seats. The vehicle's modifications were similar to those of a van carrying 17 women that flipped on the Trans-Canada Highway near Abbotsford on March 7, 2007. Three farm workers died.

The van stopped on the Pat Bay Highway was sagging so much at the rear that both the steering and braking would be affected during an emergency manoeuvre, Elliott said.

The occupants were construction workers who were heading for the ferry back home to the Vancouver area after a week at a downtown Victoria job, said police. An owner of the construction company was also inside the vehicle.

"I don't know how long they've been coming back and forth," said Elliott. "Who knows how long this has been happening?"

In its report into the March 2007 rollover crash, Worksafe B.C. determined that a lack of seatbelt use contributed to the deaths and injuries. The overloaded van also raised issues about stability because the centre of gravity shifts toward the rear of the vehicle.

In the wake of that crash, authorities renewed roadside inspections of farm-worker transport vehicles. The leased van that carried the construction workers would not have caught the attention of commercial-vehicle safety inspectors, said Elliott, because it was unmarked and appeared to be a private vehicle.

The owners of the construction company face charges under the Motor Vehicle Act, and police say other charges may be coming.

A regional officer from Worksafe B.C. was inspecting the vehicle yesterday, said spokeswoman Donna Freeman from Vancouver. "We would be looking for compliance with occupational health and safety regulations," she said. "We're still confirming who the employer is."

A report on the vehicle's condition will be made public in a few days, she said.

Hearing of the incident troubled construction representatives who work to keep the industry and its workers safe. "Safety is paramount in the construction industry," said Greg Baynton, president of the Vancouver Island Construction Association.

There's no excuse for taking risks with workers' lives by transporting them in an unsafe vehicle, he said yesterday.

The recent economic boom has prompted some contractors to look for jobs farther from home, and getting workers to and from the worksite adds to the costs, he said.