ATA Chairman Defends 65 mph Speed Limit

SAN FRANCISCO — The chairman of American Trucking Associations took some heat from association members on the issues of a 65 mph speed limit for commercial motor vehicles and installing electronic data recorders on trucks.

Lee P. Shaffer, who is chairman of Kenan Transport, Chapel Hill, N.C., defended the association’s speed limit policy in a Dec. 6 speech to ATA’s Western Highway Institute.

The comments of ATA’s top elected official built upon the themes he laid out as he began his one-year term at ATA’s Management Conference and Exhibition in November. Both then and in his speech here, Shaffer stressed the need for trucking to support a three-pronged safety agenda of speed limits, hours-of-service regulatory reform and installing so-called “black boxes” on trucks so long as the data gathered can’t be used in legal action against carriers.

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ATA’s board of directors in November changed its four-year policy of a 55 mph speed limit to reflect the higher limits set by many states since Congress repealed the federal speed limit law in 1995.



For the full story, see the Dec. 13 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.