AULD'S COVE - Officials with Mulgrave Town Council and a local RCMP detachment are hoping a newly-commissioned traffic study is the first step towards stopping dangerous activity by truck drivers frequenting a popular business in nearby Auld's Cove.

According to Mulgrave Mayor Ralph Hadley and the town's Chief Administrative Officer, Darlene Berthier-Sampson, several near misses have occurred when transport trucks and similarly-sized vehicles heading eastbound toward Cape Breton Island make left-hand turns into the parking lot of Irving Oil's Auld's Cove Big Stop, which reopened its doors this past spring after completely demolishing its previous store en route to a rebuild. 

The left-turn lanes put these trucks directly into the path of the main turning lane heading in the opposite direction, which takes motorists out of Auld's Cove and up a hill towards Mulgrave. 

At the town's February council meeting, Berthier-Sampson recalled that she had raised the issue with Nova Scotia's Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (TIR) Minister, Lloyd Hines, this past August at an event in Guysborough. Returning to Mulgrave later that day, Berthier-Sampson found herself directly in the path of an 18-wheel truck before narrowly making the turn into Mulgrave. 

Speaking at the same council meeting, Sgt. Dave Morin, the commanding officer of the Inverness District RCMP's Port Hawkesbury detachment, confirmed that the issue has come up and pledged to investigate the situation himself. 

At the following public council meeting in March, Mayor Hadley confirmed that a further conversation with Hines, who is also the town's MLA, led to the hiring of an independent consultant from Newfoundland and Labrador that will conduct a traffic study in Auld's Cove to see if the patterns of large trucks making dangerous turns into the Big Stop parking lot are consistent enough to warrant further action.