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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