Trucking Says CRASH Has It Wrong

CRASH last week gave reporters its third annual list of truck-involved fatalities by state. Texas had the worst record in 1997, with 454 deaths according to CRASH.

Texas Motor Transportation Association President Bill Webb said those statistics do not take into consideration the sheer size of the state.

“Texas has more than 138,000 miles of roads and commercial vehicles travel more than 17 billion miles per year,” he said. “When you take that into consideration, Texas has one truck-related fatality for every 34 million miles traveled in the state.”

Mr. Webb, Mr. McCormick and other trucking executives cited the industry’s support of numerous safety measures, including those in this year’s highway bill.

That legislation boosted funding for the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, which should translate into more roadside inspectors. It also ordered a study of rest area capacity for truckers. ATA had wanted to make rest area construction, expansion, improvement and access eligible for federal funding.

ATA also supported steps to provide trucking employers with better access to the driving records of those applying for driving jobs.

Further, the association lobbied for improvements to the commercial driver license, asking for review of the knowledge and skills tests and the use of fingerprints as unique identifiers to help ensure that each driver only has one CDL.

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