U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently announced the federal government’s new comprehensive National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS), fulfilling a promise to roll it out in January.
The NRSS is driven by the increase in U.S. roadway fatalities in recent years and specifically by risky driver behaviors – intoxication, speeding, failure to use seat belts and distracted driving and driver drowsiness – which significantly contribute to fatalities. During the last year’s Operation Safe Driver Week, organized by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, commercial truck drivers and motorists shared speeding and failure to use seat belts as their two most dangerous behaviors.
To address the rise in roadway fatalities, the NRSS has five objectives:
- Safer People
- Safer Roads
- Safer Vehicles
- Safer Speeds
- Post-Crash Care
What specifically does the NRSS mean for trucking? A glance at the NRSS explanations for just three of the objectives gives some indication of what lies ahead.
Safer People. For commercial truck drivers, the strategy:
- “… includes a focus on behavioral safety, such as drug and alcohol testing to address use and impairment offenses by commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders.” This suggests that the U.S. Transportation Department may soon release its proposal to implement oral fluids testing in truck driver drug tests.
- The strategy also calls for these trucking-related regulatory and enforcement actions:
- “Implement the October 2021 final rule requiring state driver licensing agencies to access and use information obtained through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse and take licensing actions against commercial drivers who have drugs or alcohol violations in the system and are not cleared to return to duty.”
- “Implement the July 2021 final rule, requiring state driver licensing agencies to develop systems for the electronic exchange of driver history record information. Work with state driver licensing agencies to improve accuracy of CDL driver records and to evaluate additional opportunities to use these more accurate records to take unsafe drivers off the road more expeditiously.”
- “Increase commercial motor vehicle highly visible traffic enforcement against risky driver behavior focused on high crash locations.”
Safer Vehicles. When it comes to commercial motor vehicles, the strategy points to two rulemakings:
- “Initiate a rulemaking to require automatic emergency braking technologies on heavy trucks”
- “Issue a final rule to upgrade existing requirements for rear impact guards on newly manufactured trailers and semi-trailers.”
Safer Speeds. When it comes to excessive speeding, two points stand out:
- The National Roadway Safety Strategy references the Federal Highway Administration’s “Proven Safety Countermeasures” initiative, which calls for three speed management elements: speed safety cameras, variable speed limits, and appropriate speed limits for all road users.
- Commercial truck drivers and motorists will have their speeds watched more closely and may experience differing speed limits depending on road type and traffic volumes.
Truckers will find many of these NRSS objectives familiar, with some already in the regulatory process. Government agencies exist in a hierarchical environment. When the secretary of transportation makes agency actions a national priority, they expect results. The NRSS omits any mention of truck parking, prompting criticism from one trucking group. But when the overall strategy leads to improved highway safety, the trucking industry and commercial vehicle law enforcement will applaud.
