Trucking news and briefs for Monday, May 15, 2023:
A coalition of eight transportation safety groups penned a letter Thursday, May 11, to members of the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure urging them to oppose a bill that would bar the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from mandating speed limiters on heavy-duty trucks.
The bill, the Deregulating Restrictions on Interstate Vehicles and Eighteen-Wheelers (DRIVE) Act, was proposed last week.
The safety groups in their letter said “arbitrarily stopping FMCSA from this rulemaking process would compromise the agency from pursuing its stated mission -- to reduce large truck injuries and fatalities.”
The groups added that speed limiter rulemakings have “been delayed over 20 times in the past 10 years,” adding that “truck speed limiters produce substantial safety benefits.”
Opponents to speed limiters argue that creating a larger speed differential between trucks and four-wheelers would increase interactions between cars and trucks, leading to crashes.
The American Trucking Associations has long been in favor of speed limiters and in March 2022 joined Road Safe America in penning a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calling for the required use of speed-limiting technology on heavy-duty trucks, and threw its support behind the December 2019-proposed Cullum Owings Large Truck Safe Operating Speed Act. That bill called for all new commercial trucks to be equipped with speed limiters and to require existing speed-limiting technology already installed on trucks manufactured after 1992 to be used while in operation.
