Protected bike lanes often take centre stage when it comes to improving safety for those who ride bikes. After all, research shows that a safe lane of travel and separation from motor vehicles is one of the most impactful ways to make roads safer for cycling. However, there are all kinds of other, less well-known and less widely adopted ways to make riding around a big, busy city safer. One example is side guards.
Side guards are mounted onto the sides of heavy-duty trucks like garbage trucks and construction vehicles to block the space between axles. The guards help to prevent cyclists and pedestrians from being pulled under the wheels of a truck in the case of a collision. Research has shown that they save lives.
(Different kinds of heavy-duty truck side guards. Image: AirFlow Deflector.)
In November, the City of Toronto followed the lead of other cities in Canada like Montreal and Edmonton and mandated that all city-owned heavy-duty vehicles have side guards.
(Mayor Chow poses with an example of a side guard on a City of Toronto vehicle. Image: Toronto Star)
I was wondering, where will the city find these custom side guards to retrofit onto their vehicles? Who manufactures this niche (in North America and at least, and for now) product? So I tracked down the company who secured the bid to equip all City of Toronto heavy trucks with side guards: AirFlow Deflector. Their President and Chief Advocacy Officer, Robert Martineau, was kind enough to tell me all about the industry, his company, and their life-saving product.
AirFlow Deflector is a Canadian company that began manufacturing side guards in 2005 after hearing about a pedestrian who was killed after being hit by a snow removal truck driver. Side guards had already become mandatory in Europe in the early 1990s, and the company felt that they could develop and offer a product that could make a difference and make our roads safer. Martineau and AirFlow Deflector’s solution was a “full fiberglass panel CTS system,” which they believed would be more effective than the conventional rail system used elsewhere.
So they got to work producing their side guards and have been making them ever since. Their side guards are made of both aluminum and steel and are sourced and manufactured in Montréal. However, they will be opening a Toronto outpost after successfully bidding on the City of Toronto’s project to supply and equip the entire City truck fleet with side guards. Martineau mentioned that they will begin in just a couple of weeks and that the entire fleet of almost 600 vehicles will be retrofitted within three years.
Martineau is optimistic that the City of Toronto’s new mandate will eventually spread to the private sector. In many cities they have worked with, including New York, Chicago, and Montreal, the side guard retrofit project has eventually expanded to private contractors on City contracts.
With research proving the life-saving impact of the installation of side guards on large trucks, hopefully, we’ll see this simple technology more readily adopted in Toronto, across Canada, and around the world.
Thank you to Robert Martineau and AirFlow Deflector for their insightful comments on side guards and road safety. Learn more about them by visiting their website by clicking here.
