Flexible grants needed to maintain truck safety: CVSA

WASHINGTON – Reduced funding of commercial motor vehicle safety programs would weaken state enforcement efforts, warns the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), and "large truck-related injuries and deaths could tick upwards."

“We are finally heading in the right direction with a downward trend in heavy truck fatalities. With the economy picking up and highway traffic increasing, I don’t believe we could continue that trend if the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) and state safety grant funds are cut," Capt. Steve Dowling, president of CVSA, told a Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, on the reauthorization of the nation’s surface transportation programs.

CVSA, which is made up of North American truck enforcement and safety agencies, urged Congress to continue to focus funds on enhancing the MCSAP and recommended making the safety grant programs more flexible.

?Some regions need to focus on the crashes caused by drivers following too closely, speeding, and unsafe lane changes by both the car and the truck or bus, Dowling noted.

In rural areas, he says, the crash picture is heavily influenced by fatigued driving.

"States should have the flexibility that would allow them to focus the necessary resources on what problems they are experiencing."

Increasingly, however, more exemptions are being enacted through the statutory and regulatory processes — HOS exemptions for utility service drivers and agricultural transporters, for example – and Dowling says the rules and enforcement need to remain consistent.

Dowling also said that although CVSA realizes there is an interest in improving truck productivity by way of increasing truck size and weights, it should "not come at the expense of safety and bridge and infrastructure protection."

As well, advancements in crashworthiness and passenger protection systems need to be accelerated to the market and providing a tax credit is the quickest way to promote wider usage of technologies such as collision avoidance, lane departure warning, stability control, and brake stroke monitoring.