Editorial: Focus on Safety

When Congress returns from its summer recess this week, it will face a number of issues related to trucking, including legislation that would improve the safety of our nation’s highways.

None of these measures is more crucial than bills that are pending in the House and the Senate that would create a separate motor carrier administration to govern federal efforts to regulate the industry and coordinate efforts to improve safety on our roads.

Lawmakers have pledged swift action on the bills, and we hope they keep their word.

The mix of truck and highway safety is not a new issue, nor is it as easy to understand and fix as some seem to think. Transport Topics, in a two-part series that begins this week, examines the policies, politics and economics behind trucking safety and the efforts to make the nation’s highway network safer.

Motor carrier safety oversight has been housed within the Federal Highway Administration for more than 30 years. As the number of trucks on the road has skyrocketed and the miles traveled soared, the agency has struggled to keep pace, and to reduce the number of truck-related deaths, with the limited resources it has been provided by successive administrations. It has not been an easy task, our reporters found.

TT’s comprehensive report illustrates the growing efforts to improve safety by all parties in a variety of areas. And it also shows that we have a long way to go before we can declare victory in the campaign for safer highways.

This week’s report includes stories on efforts to improve the commercial driver license program, to streamline and modernize the federal safety handbook and to explain the rationale behind the federal government’s safety efforts.

No one supports measures to improve safety more than the trucking industry. The highways are our workplace, and we want them to be safe. Trucking is taking a number of steps on its own to improve safety. In Part 2 of the series, next week, TT examines the technology carriers are investing in to improve safety and the cost of these improvements.