The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed a regulation mandating speed limiters for all heavy commercial trucks, limiting the speed of all heavy trucks to 68 mph, a proposal some truckers support and others oppose.
NHTSA will consider whether all trucks weighing more than 26,000 pounds should have electronic control modules or ECMs limiting speeds to no more than 68 mph.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the notice was that trucking companies had petitioned NHTSA to move forward with the rulemaking. A petition was filed by the American Trucking Association, Road Safe America and a group of commercial trucking firms, including Schneider National, Inc., C.R. England, Inc., H.O. Wolding, Inc., ATS Intermodal, LLC, DART Transit Company, J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc., U.S. Xpress, Inc., Covenant Transport, Inc., and Jet Express, Inc.
Voluntary Compliance from Some Trucking Companies
Schneider has voluntarily limited its 18-wheelers to 65 mph since 1996. According to crash data from their own fleet, vehicles without speed limiters accounted for 40 percent of the company's serious collisions while driving only 17 percent of the company's total miles. Schneider stated that its tractor-trailers have a significantly lower crash rate than large trucks that are not speed limited or have a maximum speed setting greater than 65 mph.
In addition to the agenda for limiting speeds, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has issued a regulatory proposal requiring interstate commercial truck and bus companies to install electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) to monitor the number of hours their drivers are on the road.
FMCSA proposes mandatory installation and use of EOBRs in all commercial motor vehicles to insure compliance with hours of service regulations. The EOBRs or electronic data recorders (EDRs) would track such data as the speed, when brakes are applied, driver actions, and systems status immediately before trucking accidents.
Hours of Service
Hours of Service are important, because those regulations control how long a big rig driver can drive, how long the rest periods have to be, and are often violated by drivers attempting to make a deadline.
Truck-driver fatigue contributed to eight percent of crashes involving commercial trucks.
Drivers are currently responsible for logbooks, which are required to show their hours of service, but the records are often falsified.
The FMCSA expects that better control and monitoring of driver behavior will ensure trucking companies are better able to comply with the HOS regulations and will improve overall highway safety.
Trucks, Interstates and Utah
In a state like Utah, with vast stretches of interstate highway, these two initiatives should help save lives, especially on Interstate Highways. I-15 carries much of the I-70 traffic from Denver heading to Las Vegas and Southern California.
I-80 is the busiest transcontinental interstate, with vast numbers of trucks traveling from California, passing Salt Lake and back to the east coast, following the route of the original transcontinental railroad.
Reducing accidents caused by truck drivers violating their hours-of-service time limits, or driving too fast, is important in Utah, where long distances can encourage both driving too long at unsafe speeds.
Because some of these proposal may still be years away from actual implementation, the number of crashes involving semi-trucks in Utah may not change significantly. If you have been injured in such a crash, speak with a Salt Lake City personal injury attorney experienced in handling these types of cases.
