Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors has released its new Class 1 Driver Experience Record, a program demanded by insurers after years of skyrocketing claims involving untrained drivers. The irony? The same government that ignored the problem of unqualified drivers for years now expects a magic form to fix it.
This isn’t safety reform. It’s paperwork theatre.
A Form Written by People Who Don’t Understand the Industry
Carriers are now required to document every tiny detail of a driver’s history, including:
Equipment Types
Commodities
Every TDG class separately.
Sand, gravel, water, dairy.
“Over-dimensional” AND “overweight” as separate categories—despite being essentially the same thing. Any professional would simply call it permitted or extraordinary loads.
Driving Environments
Mountains, cliff roads, ice roads, resource roads.
Range of Operations
Urban, interurban, interprovincial, international (USA, Mexico, other).
This isn’t meaningful safety data. It’s bureaucratic box-ticking designed to look impressive on paper.
Shifting Liability to Carriers—Not Improving Safety
The person who signs the form is now personally attesting to a driver’s training, experience, competence, and claims history.
If that driver has a major collision? The attestor may be the one explaining their signature.
Meanwhile, the actual safety problem remains untouched.
Legitimate Carriers Already Do This Work
Carriers who operate legally and pay for insurance already have:
This form doesn’t improve anything—they already manage driver development responsibly.
The Real Problem? The Province Still Won’t Touch It.
The carriers destroying Alberta’s insurance market are:
These carriers will ignore the form or fabricate it—just like they ignore every other requirement.
Alberta’s own track record proves this.
One carrier hit so many bridges in BC that the province shut them out. Alberta welcomed them with open arms and operating authority.
Now TEC wants you to record how many structures your drivers have hit. Why? The government clearly doesn’t care.
Sure, Alberta Transportation has posted some recent “wins” — shutting down 13 carriers sounds impressive, but in reality, that’s just 0.067% of Alberta carriers, the investigations took half a year, and Minister Dreeshen has held this portfolio since 2022. You don’t get applause for finally doing your job.
This isn’t safety. It’s a distraction designed to appease the insurance industry while the actual causes of rising premiums continue unchecked.
