A mandate that would require speed-limiting devices on large trucks is not supported by solid science, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association told federal regulators.
Requiring the limiters would “make highways less safe,” OOIDA said in an April 23 letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
"OOIDA is not pushing for faster speed limits,” the letter said. “But whatever a jurisdiction decides, the speed limit ought to be the same limit for all vehicles in order to foster a predictable, safer highway driving environment.”
The two federal agencies are preparing a proposed rule that would require the speed governors on all heavy trucks. The current Department of Transportation significant rulemakings report targets the release of the proposal for July 27. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, though, told a Senate subcommittee April 22 that he hoped to have the proposed rule completed in the fall.
OOIDA requested that the agencies fully consider all studies and data before setting a policy that would create a “dangerous, split-speed environment on U.S. highways.”
"The association has been opposed to policies that create speed differentials for heavy-duty trucks because of the resulting increased interactions between vehicles, which lead to a greater likelihood of collisions,” OOIDA said.
OOIDA referenced two studies, one in 1964 and the other in 2005, that concluded that regardless of the average speed on the highway, the more a driver deviates from the average speed, the greater his chance of being involved in an accident.
The OOIDA letter was sent only a few days after American Trucking Associations leaders renewed its request that DOT act quickly to issue its proposed rule requiring that electronic speed limiters on all large trucks be set no more than 65 mph.
ATA first petitioned regulators to mandate speed limiters in 2006.
“We waited patiently until the government finally said in January 2011 they would move ahead with a speed limiter mandate, but this common-sense regulation has been mired in bureaucracy for over four years now,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a April 20 statement. “It is long past time for NHTSA and FMCSA to move ahead with this rule.”
