4/30/2012 8:00:00 AM Write a Letter to the Editor

Letters: Football & Limiters, Gas Prices, Regulation

These Letters to the Editor appear in the April 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Football, Limiters

It is good to see some fleets moving college football teams (“Fleets Move College Football Gear for Pride’s Sake, Executives Say,” 4-9, p. 1). These worthwhile causes can benefit from trucking companies putting our best foot forward.

Small companies like ours have been hauling high school bands around to their games — and to faraway events like the Rose Bowl Parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — for more than a decade.

Each day, the American public gets more safety and professionalism than they pay for from the American trucker.

On a more serious note, in that same issue of Transport Topics (p. 7), Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for American Trucking Associations, writes about the advantages of speed limiters — showing one side of a very big issue.

The statistics quoted do not accurately represent the factor of speed in crashes. As roadside accident reports are written, many factors (unsafe lane changes, an animal on road, etc.) are possible contributors to a crash. By the statistics reported in Abbott’s “Opinion” piece, driving too fast for conditions or in excess of posted limits are among the many factors that may have contributed to crashes.

We can reason through this to see that it’s possible a speed limiter wouldn’t have affected any of these accidents — for example, if the posted speed was less than the speed limiter’s setting. When truck drivers are forced to operate below the posted limit on safe roads and in good conditions, time pressures will inspire them to drive faster on the kinds of highways on which they y would otherwise choose to drive more slowly.

Here in Texas, we allow 80 mph in some cases, and trucks running slower than that become obstacles for the rest of the traffic.

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