Support Grows for Trucking Agency
Support is snowballing for a separate motor carrier safety administration, as the Federal Highway Administration continues to take body blows for its failure to adequately enforce safety regulations and for its sluggishness in issuing a final rule on hours-of-service regulations.
Claybrook’s position shift is significant because Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) has made commercial vehicle safety legislation and the creation of a new motor carrier agency under the Department of Transportation one of his committee’s top priorities. His bill, the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, would do just that.
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At a Senate hearing Sept. 29, Joan Claybrook, president of consumer watchdog group Public Citizen and a longtime advocate of moving motor carrier safety enforcement to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, softened that stance considerably.
"We originally supported a move to NHTSA, but we don’t necessarily oppose a separate agency for enforcement, so long as data collection and rulemaking functions are transferred to NHTSA," Claybrook told the Senate Commerce Committee’s Surface Transportation Subcommittee.
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