This year’s Operation Safe Driver Week is scheduled for July 10-16. Law enforcement personnel in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. will patrol roadways throughout that week, issuing warnings and citations to commercial motor vehicle and passenger vehicle drivers engaging in unsafe driving behaviors. Officers will look for violations such as speeding, distracted driving, following too closely, improper lane change, and drunk or drugged driving.
Recently the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) released its latest annual traffic crash report, showing that traffic crashes nationwide cost 43.915 lives in 2021, a 16-year high.
Consequently, speeding, in particular, will be a dangerous driving behavior that officers will identify and target during Operation Safe Driver Week. Even as far back as 2019, many in the law enforcement and trucking communities raised concerns about truckers driving too fast. Figures show the number of truckers driving above the speed limit increased dramatically over the previous three years.
“The rising fatalities on our roadways are a national crisis; we cannot and must not accept these deaths as inevitable,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
In February, Buttigieg announced the federal government’s new comprehensive National Roadway Safety Strategy to combat the increase in speeding by all types of drivers.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) created the Operation Safe Driver Program to improve the driving behaviors of all drivers and reduce the number of crashes involving commercial motor vehicles on our roadways through educational and traffic enforcement strategies. CVSA created operation Safe Driver Week with support from federal agencies in Canada, Mexico and the U.S., the motor carrier industry, and transportation safety organizations.
“This safe driving initiative and campaign focuses specifically on drivers’ actions – whether it’s something a driver did, like speeding, or something they didn’t do, such as not paying attention to the driving task,” said CVSA President and Captain John Broers with the South Dakota Highway Patrol. “This focus on drivers’ behaviors is our effort to identify and educate drivers who are operating dangerously on our roadways, with the goal of preventing crashes from occurring.”
Contact the agency or department responsible for overseeing commercial motor vehicle safety in your area to find out about Operation Safe Driver Week enforcement events.
You can also prepare for Operation Safe Driver week, as well as other truck safety enforcement efforts, by listening to this installment of the “Eyes on the Road” trucking podcast, “How to Benefit from Operation Safe Driver Week and Brake Safety Week.”
