American Carriers Launch
their Own Speed Limiter Campaign
Reproduced with permission. As
reported by todaystrucking.com, Feb. 14, 2006
TAMPA, Fla. -- The American Trucking Associations, the
U.S.’s largest trucking industry trade group, has followed the lead of their
Canadian brethren and endorsed a move to limit the maximum speed of large
trucks, at the time of manufacture, to no more than 68 mph. The group took the
action at its annual Winter Leadership meeting in Tampa, Fla.
The ATA says the move is aimed at reducing the number
and severity of speed-related crashes among all vehicles on U. S. highways.
Other ATA safety initiatives include a call for universal primary safety belt
laws in the fifty states and the enforcement of traffic laws against unsafe
driving actions around large trucks.
When in Toronto last fall for the Ontario Trucking
Association annual convention, ATA President Bill Graves hinted he might support
a mandate for speed limiters and added he would take such a proposal to his
members for consideration.
The OTA was the first trucking group to formally draft
the idea, and launched a full-fledged lobbying campaign last fall. Its
determined speed cap of 105 km/h, which converts to about 65 mph, is slightly
slower than the ATA consensus.
While the OTA enjoys support from most of the other
provincial trucking associations -- as well as environmental and safety groups
-- its proposal is being challenged by many grassroots truckers and
owner-operator groups like the Owner-Operator’s Business Association of Canada
(OBAC) and the Virginia-based Owner-Operator and Independent Drivers Association
(OOIDA), who argue that governed trucks may actually increase the risk of
collision by creating dangerous speed differentials.
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has received
comments from all sorts of groups and stakeholders and is expected to respond to
the OTA proposal in the next few days or weeks.
The maximum governed speed effort in the U.S. follows
a study issued by ATA motor carriers, which found that nearly 75 percent of the
trucks evaluated in the study already had speed governors and that most were set
at 70 mph or lower.
"There has been a growing sense within the trucking
industry for the need to slow down the large truck population as well as all
traffic," said Bill Graves, ATA President and CEO. "With speeding as a factor in
one third of all fatal highway crashes, it makes all the sense in the world to
work to reduce this number."
Reproduced with permission.
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