Safety

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday that the federal government would seek to ban text messaging by all drivers hauling hazardous materials.

A federal rule banning truck drivers from texting while driving has been sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget, in advance of Tuesday’s distracted driving summit being hosted by the Department of Transportation in Washington.

The fine for texting or talking on a cell phone could become as high as $500 in New Jersey under a bill approved Monday by the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee.

The Department of Transportation has announced the agenda for its second Distracted Driving Summit, scheduled for Sept. 21 in Washington.

Truck drivers who participated in a test of a five-year, mostly federally funded program to develop integrated crash warning systems said the prototype technology helped them avoid accidents, but they said the frequent false alarms were “annoyances.”

The trucking industry received some of the best news possible last week, when the federal government announced that the number of fatalities in truck-involved crashes nosedived 20% during 2009.

The number of people killed in large-truck crashes dropped 20% in 2009 to the lowest level on record, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

Garmin Ltd. recently recalled 796,000 Global Positioning System navigation units in the United States, but the company’s trucker-specific GPS navigation handheld was not affected, the company said.

Several trade groups told federal regulators that requiring more detailed information on applications for special permits to haul hazardous materials will not increase hazmat safety and will increase the paperwork burden on applicants.

Transport Topics Online will be closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday. Please check back on Tuesday, Sept. 7, for the latest trucking and freight transportation news.