DOT Plans Broad Safety Forum

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The Department of Transportation last week announced plans for a National Transportation Safety Conference, which will be broader in scope than the truck and bus safety summit canceled by the Federal Highway Administration in November.

Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater said the conference will lay the “foundation for the development of new and expanded collaborations.”

Invitations for the conference, scheduled for March 2 to 3 in Washington, D.C., were sent last week to transportation associations, labor unions, government and law enforcement agencies, as well as consumer and grass-roots groups.

“This conference will help to focus the nation’s safety agenda on the nations highway’s, railways, waterways and airways,” said Federal Railroad Administrator Jolene Molitoris, who is organizing the conference.

The seminar will feature a live town hall meeting on how transportation safety affects people’s lives and sessions on enhancing transportation safety.

The conference is not a replacement for the FHWA truck and bus safety summit, said Pam Barry, a spokesman for Molitoris. “That was a completely different process.”

That summit was canceled at the last minute because of concerns raised by safety groups that panels were too dominated by industry.