Slater Pitches New DOT Safety Plan

Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater Tuesday promised a 50% reduction in truck-related fatalities over the next decade. That would amount to cutting the number of deaths from about 5,000 to about 2,500 each year.

Slater requested an extra $56 million for the Department of Transportation's budget for fiscal 2000 to fund the agency's new safety action plan, which includes tougher enforcement of truck and bus safety regulations; more federal safety specialists; double the carrier compliance required of each specialist; higher fines and an end to enforcement "hand slaps."

Slater also said the number of truck-related highway fatalities had dropped by almost 100 from 1997 to 1998, the first time the absolute number had declined in three years.

At a Tuesday press conference, Slater and Federal Highway Administrator Kenneth Wykle did not recommend moving the Office of Motor Carrier Safety from the Federal Highway Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Such a move is championed by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Joan Claybrook, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen and spokeswoman for CRASH. But Slater did not rule it out, either.

The secretary did express some frustration with the idea of negotiating hours-of-service reform – "A lot of the parties continue to be grounded in their personal interests," he said – and he suggested a third method of rulemaking, neither traditional nor negotiated, to get the final rule in place.

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