FMCSA Should Shift Focus to Crash Causes, Industry Exec Tells Senators
The general counsel for one of the nation’s largest trucking companies told a Senate panel that to reinforce the recent reduction in truck crashes the federal government must redirect its safety efforts to address the primary causes.
“The data on these factors are very clear and compelling; the vast majority of crashes, close to 90%, are the result of driver error,” Jim Mullen of Werner Enterprises, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, said on behalf of American Trucking Associations.
It would be logical for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to focus on driver behavior and on ways to affect it, Mullen said at a Jan. 29 hearing held by the Commerce, Science and Transportation’s subcommittee on surface transportation.
“For example, because speeding is the greatest single contributor to truck crashes, the industry petitioned FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2006 to establish a rule requiring the use of speed limiters on all trucks over 26,000 pounds,” Mullen said. “Yet, to date, neither agency has issued a proposed rule to this end.”
Mullen said trucking and FMCSA must work together on efforts that have “a direct impact on driver safety, as opposed to issues that may be driven by political or economic issues.”
In addition to issuing the speed-limiter rule, Mullen said, FMCSA should speed up publication of its final rule on electronic logging devices.
He also said truck safety efforts should shift in focus from roadside inspection enforcement to what he called “a more effective model centered on on-road traffic enforcement and driver behavior.”
There should also be incentives that promote the use of crash avoidance technology on trucks such as lane departure warning systems and forward collision warning systems, Mullen said.
In the area of driver training, FMCSA should develop “robust” rules that focus on performance and comprehension, not hours of education, he said.
Mullen also said that FMCSA ought to rework the Compliance, Safety, Accountability system so it focuses on high-risk carriers and to this end should re-examine the role of crash data in CSA scores.
Lastly, Mullen said Congress must carefully monitor the study FMCSA has been ordered to do on the hours-of-service restart rule.
Congress recently suspended the 34-hour restart rule pending a study on how the rule affects highway safety.
Mullen said the trucking industry is proud of the safety gains it has realized from its estimated $7 billion in safety-related investments.
“Over the past decade the number of large truck-related fatalities has dropped 21% and the large truck fatality rate has dropped 37%,” he told the subcommittee. “At Werner, we have experienced a 22% decrease in preventable Department of Transportation reportable crashes from 2007 through the end of 2014.”
