Editorial: Closer to Trucking Safety Administration?

Related Stories Opinion: Editorial: The Federal Trucking Administration. Opinion: It's time for a Motor Carrier Administration. Check out the Speaking Out section, which includes Editorials, Opinion peices and letters from readers. (Note: To return to this story, click the "Back" button on your browser.)

The long drive toward the creation of a separate, dedicated trucking safety agency in the federal government picked up steam last week when the Department of Transportation’s inspector general announced his support for such an office.

Kenneth Mead endorsed the establishment of a Motor Carrier Safety Administration within DOT to oversee the government’s trucking programs. Those programs now reside at the Federal Highway Administration, sharing attention with engineering and construction imperatives.

Mead told the Senate Commerce Committee that the current environment, with demand for trucking service skyrocketing and with highway congestion and accidents rising, “justifies an agency with a clear, pre-eminent safety mission, free of the need to compete with other very important highway transportation department missions.”

The message has been echoing for 30 years, and certainly American Trucking Associations has long beat the drum: Trucking needs its own federal agency, on the same order as what the rail, aviation and maritime industries have at DOT.

Mead told the senators that because of his office’s research, “we increasingly are of the view that it would be in the long-term interests of public safety to create a Motor Carrier Safety Administration.”

We couldn’t have said it better.

That Mead also agrees wholeheartedly with us that the responsibility for truck safety should not be moved to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is simply icing on the cake.

e told legislators that NHTSA’s primary responsibility is to oversee the safety engineering of passenger and commercial vehicles.

The proposal for a separate trucking office was quickly seconded by a large number of groups, including the National Transportation Safety Board, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, National Private Truck Council, Motor Freight Carrier Association and, of course, ATA.

About the only nay-sayer at the Senate hearing was Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator and a well-known anti-trucking voice who has been leading the charge to shift truck safety oversight to NHTSA.

The inspector general was responding to requests for insight on DOT’s handling of trucking from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who has been the primary Capitol Hill sponsor of an effort to shift the safety oversight to NHTSA.

We hope that Mead’s conclusions lead Congress to do the right thing: create the new trucking administration and place it on a sound footing of its own.