WhatFinger


"It's safer for everyone when drivers stay in the business rather than leaving and creating a void filled by new, inexperienced drivers."

Truckers concerned misleading headlines undermine highway safety improvement efforts



Grain Valley, Mo. – A national association that represents professional truckers has heard concerns from its members about recent news headlines that criticize the safety of the trucking industry. Truckers say the news stories leave out or misrepresent important facts and place unfounded blame on them for all truck-related crashes.
"It's a short-sighted view that undermines efforts to bring meaningful improvements to highway safety," said Media Spokesperson Norita Taylor, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. "Our members believe the stories do more harm than good to public safety, and want the motoring public to know that truck drivers log millions more accident-free miles than otherwise." Many recent news headlines and messages contain statistics about fatalities in truck-related crashes, rounding up the numbers to 4,000 per year. But, according to studies by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 70 percent of those crashes are not caused by truck drivers.

Support Canada Free Press


This week, CNBC broadcast an investigative series suggesting that the trucking industry is dangerous, insisting there should be a "national outcry" to add more regulations. However, motor carriers are actually held accountable to thousands of federal and state regulations. OOIDA cautions against adding more costly and burdensome regulations which only focus on technology that are likely to push safe, experienced drivers out of the industry. The emphasis should instead be directed to education for entry-level truck drivers as well as educating the general motoring public. "At a time when annual turnover is more than 100 percent, the effort should be to find ways to keep drivers in the industry and have new drivers view it as a career choice," said Taylor. "It's safer for everyone when drivers stay in the business rather than leaving and creating a void filled by new, inexperienced drivers." "One primary area of safety efforts should be educating the motoring public about driving around trucks," added Taylor. "There should be standardized training for new truck drivers as well." At this time, there are no federal requirements for training to get a CDL, a commercial driver license. Congress directed the FMCSA to create a mandate on training standards many years ago, but to date the agency still has not completed a rulemaking on truck driver training. New driver training is not the only issue the Association would like to see more focus on in the future. OOIDA and professional drivers developed the Truckers for Safety Agenda, TruckersforSafety.com. This campaign looks at ways to improve highway safety without imposing burdensome regulations in a variety of areas. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the only national trade association exclusively representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Mo. area. The Association currently has more than 150,000 members from all 50 states and Canada.


View Comments

News on the Net -- Bio and Archives

News from around the world


Sponsored