Opinion: Trucking’s Safety Accomplishments Carry The Industry into the New Century

By Walter B. McCormick Jr.

As this century draws to a close, it is nice to be able to look back and say that our work allows us to enter into the 21st century with safer roads.

According to the most recent federal statistics, there have been significant improvements in several major truck safety categories, making the 1990s the industry’s safest decade ever. Highlighting our safety success story is a 34% drop in the large truck fatal crash rate over the past 10 years to an all-time low of 2.3 fatal crashes per 100 million-miles-traveled.

It is the American Trucking Associations’ responsible motor carriers and their professional truck drivers who deserve the credit for making significant safety improvements that helped produce this record.

And this year ATA added another major safety accomplishment to this growing list. Recently, President Clinton signed legislation creating the new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, something ATA had fought for for 15 years. The new federal agency will focus solely on motor carrier safety, finally putting the trucking industry, which carries more than 80% of the country’s freight transportation revenue, on par with the other modes of transportation.

ow, just as the Federal Aviation Administration’s principal concern is airline safety, so will the new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s focus be the safety of large trucks and buses. For the first time, one person will be accountable for truck safety, and he or she will have a direct line to the secretary of transportation.

This rise to parity is welcome news for the trucking industry and all motorists. It will increase resources for highway safety, sideline more bad drivers and elevate a vital responsibility long buried in the bureaucracy.

The American Trucking Associations is proud of this accomplishment. We want only those who want to put safety first on the road. It is the right approach for the country and for our industry, which has built its success on the twin pillars of safety and reliability.

In the mid-1980s, when I served as the senior transportation lawyer for the United States Senate, there was talk of a separate truck safety agency. But Congress was not interested in an organizational shell game. I remembered that lesson when I came to ATA. This time, we fought not for simply moving a box on an organization chart, but for a complete safety package with real, results-oriented reforms.

So ATA worked to include increased funding for roadside inspections and highway safety education, safety-oriented reforms to the commercial driver license system and better controls on trucks entering the U.S. from Mexico.

On CDL reform, the bill creating the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also ends provisional licenses, so that drivers are not on the road before they are ready. It requires all moving violations — whether they occur in a truck or a passenger car — to go on a driver’s commercial record.

In short, this package will make it a lot harder for the wrong drivers to get behind the wheel of a truck. Some folks are surprised to hear that this is a major priority for America’s trucking lobby. But the simple truth is, the highway is our workplace and we want it to be safe. These reforms and a new safety agency are important first steps.

This new agency will increase the focus on truck safety, but whether safety itself increases depends mostly on us. ATA, for its part, will continue its own safety initiatives. We also hope that as the amount of freight moved in this country continues to climb, this new agency examines not only how to make trucks safer but also more productive as the primary movers of the U.S. economy.

There is still work to be done. But we feel this is a very special holiday present to every American — one that will save lives, reduce injuries and assure trucking’s continued vital contribution to a strong economy.