Truck Safety Gaining, Cirillo Tells Hill Panel
Trucking’s chief federal regulator defended her agency last week against criticism about the slow pace of hiring staff and writing rules, and revealed that deaths from truck-related crashes in 1999 fell 3% from the previous year, which she said showed that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is doing its job.
"I think the results under my watch demonstrate we can move forward, we can set priorities and we can reduce fatalities,” Julie A. Cirillo, the acting deputy motor carrier safety administrator, said in response to criticism by the General Accounting Office and the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General.
The hearing was the first before the subcommittee since Congress created the new agency in the fall in response to criticism from Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and the two government watchdog agencies. They claimed that an emphasis on education and outreach rather than enforcement had contributed to a 20% increase in truck-involved fatalities between 1992 and 1997.
 | Number of Deaths in Truck-Related Crashes 1989-1999 |
|  Source: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration |
Both the criticism and Cirillo’s response came at a March 2 hearing before the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee on the motor carrier agency’s $279 million budget request for 2001.
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