Drivers Have High Profile at NTSB

For the Chinese, 1999 is the year of the rabbit. For the National Transportation Safety Board, this is the year of heavy vehicle safety.

Hearings on truck and bus safety, scheduled from April 14 to 16 at Georgetown University, are just the board’s latest look at what has become a high-profile issue, said spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi.

“We pick a different issue every year,” she said last week.

Jim Hall, chairman of the agency, has been expanding his knowledge about safety problems faced by rank-and-file drivers. Earlier this year, he learned about long-haul trucking operations during a day at U.S. Xpress Enterprises in Chattanooga, Tenn., and he traveled to Australia to explore how that nation’s trucking industry deals with driver fatigue.

The board issued a report on bus safety in April. Another report is scheduled to come out this summer on bus crash-worthiness, and the board plans to hold a hearing in July on how emerging technology can improve truck and bus safety.

This week’s hearings are a top-to-bottom discussion of motor carrier safety, Peduzzi said.

We want to be sure this issue is being looked at objectively, clearing up any misconceptions about the issue, and get the facts on the table,” she said. “Then we can go forward and see what needs to be done to improve highway safety.”

The hearing is divided into four parts, Peduzzi said.

The first part will include a discussion on truck and bus safety from the perspective of truck, bus and automobile drivers, followed by a panel featuring Max Fuller, co-chairman at U.S. Xpress; Jim Hebe, chief executive officer of Freightliner Corp.; and Ed Rastatter, policy director for the National Industrial Transportation League.

The second part will offer dialogue on the topic “Safety — Do We Need to Refocus?” featuring Julie Cirillo, program manager for the Motor Carrier and Highway Safety business unit, and Harry Eubanks, chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, and an examination of how best to determine statistically whether highways are getting safer entitled “Do the Numbers Tell the Story?”.

Third, Jim York, safety director of the National Private Truck Council; Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association; and Bill Leasure of the Truck Manufacturers Association will describe looming changes in the industry. That talk will be followed by a look at the state of the federal motor carrier safety program as seen from the perspectives of government, trucking and the insurance industry.

The meeting will conclude with a discussion of future oversight options, featuring Cirillo and safety advocate Joan Claybrook.