OOIDA asks why ‘unproven science’ going forward in speed limiter rule

“Speed limiting a truck at 68 miles per hour, or at any other speed, will not improve highway safety,” Todd Spencer, OOIDA executive vice president said.

The Trucker News Services

12/30/2010

GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. — The announcement that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would consider the possibility of speed limiting heavy trucks to 68 mph has small business truckers wondering why this unproven science is moving forward while minimum training standards for drivers are still not on the books, the nation’s leading association of independent truckers said Thursday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agreed to initiate a rulemaking Thursday based on pleas from big trucking entities even though there is no data to support any safety benefits to speed limiting trucks, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said in a news release.

“Speed limiting a truck at 68 miles per hour, or at any other speed, will not improve highway safety,” Todd Spencer, OOIDA executive vice president said. “All credible highway research shows that highways are safest when all vehicles travel at the same speed and that different speeds for cars and trucks actually increase the likelihood of accidents.”

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Also, a study conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute shows that speed limited trucks are overrepresented in rear-end fatalities involving large trucks. Only 4 percent of all trucks are speed limited, yet half of the rear-end fatalities involving trucks were with speed-limited trucks.

Notably, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s large truck crash causation study showed that there were no fatalities in crashes above 70 mph, Spencer said.

OOIDA contends that economics and the current per-mile pay structure for drivers is the real motivation to reduce the ability of trucks to go with the flow of traffic.

“Hiring the most experienced drivers and paying them professional wages isn’t a priority for most large motor carriers and it’s cheaper to just govern the engine,” Spencer said. “This isn’t a safety measure NHTSA is proposing. It’s a permission slip for big trucking companies to remain unaccountable.” Currently, there are no regulations requiring any training whatsoever in order to obtain a commercial drivers license or CDL, even though there is a proposed rule that has been pending for years with the FMCSA.

The Trucker staff may be contacted to comment at editor@thetrucker.com.

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