Editorial: Critics Build Nothing

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The imbroglio stirred up by the group called Citizens for Responsible and Safe Highways over Werner Enterprises’ automated log system is the latest chapter in CRASH’s campaign to ensure that no good deed by the trucking industry or federal regulators to improve road safety goes unpunished.

Instead of praising Werner for its trail-blazing and costly good-faith attempt to find a better way to keep driver logs and ensure that hours-of-service regulations are being met, CRASH has alleged that the paperless system is actually a way to avoid federal restrictions on the number of hours drivers may spend behind the wheel.

Werner is conducting a test of its automated system under the watchful eye of the Federal Highway Administration, which is helping the company refine its program. That CRASH chose to attack the system, with apparently little understanding of how it actually works, further illustrates that the group’s endgame appears to be unceasing criticism of trucking and all attempts by the industry to improve safety and efficiency.

To review, CRASH is now on record as opposing, in addition to Werner’s automated log system: the industry’s “No-Zone” education campaign to encourage motorists to avoid truckers’ blind spots on the road; and the industry’s campaign to modernize federal hours-of-service regulations to better reflect scientific understanding of human sleep and attention patterns. CRASH also successfully brought pressure on FHWA to cancel its long-planned truck safety summit late last year, and criticized the regulations requiring truckers to put reflective safety tape on the sides of trailers.

About the only thing CRASH has been for is moving the Office of Motor Carriers from the Federal Highway Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an idea that has attracted precious little support and would represent more a change in form than in substance.

To quote the late Robert Moses, a man who helped create much of New York City, “critics build nothing.” Not that honest criticism isn’t an important part of the decision-making process. But blind, mindless and predictable nay-saying, as in CRASH’s many efforts, is counter-productive. Its completely negative stance should eliminate CRASH from ever having a seat at the table when industry leaders and government officials sit down to discuss ways to improve highway safety.