Road Safe America Statement Supporting Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act and Alerting All to the Dangerous Unintended Consequence Potential

ATLANTA, Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following statement was released today by Road Safe America:

Road Safe America strongly supports the Highway Safety Bill that Senators Pryor and Alexander proposed in late September, 2010.  Use of electric on-board recorders has a proven record of improving safety compliance on our highways.  We are also delighted that the five leading carriers came out simultaneously in support of this new law.  The American people will see this as a coordinated effort to save lives and injuries.

We also want to take this opportunity, however, to inform the Senators of the unintended consequence likely if the proposed safety measure stops at the EOBR alone.  Independent drivers and their trade association executives have told us directly that mandatory use of EOBR's will force their average driver to drive faster in order to cover as many miles as he/she is expected to in the allowed hours-of-service.  This clearly would lead to more tragic crashes, if allowed.

Use of an already-present piece of technology – the speed limiter – at a reasonable top speed will prevent this unintended consequence.  

Speed limiter technology has been standard equipment in all heavy commercial trucks since 1992.  There will be no additional expense to require their use.  Road Safe America, the American Trucking Associations and numerous commercial fleets petitioned the Department of Transportation over four years ago to require the use of these speed limiters.  We are currently requesting that they be set at 65 mph or slower. There has yet to be any action taken on this petition.

The U.S. is the only technologically advanced country in the world without any requirement for heavy commercial vehicles to use their speed limiters at any top speed.

We therefore ask that the requirement for the use of speed limiters be added to this important effort with the new congress.

SOURCE Road Safe America

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