WASHINGTON — Truck safety advocates want the Biden administration to investigate whether regulators violated ethics rules and federal law in conducting cost-benefit assessments of crash protection equipment for truck trailers.
In a letter sent Thursday to U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Eric Soskin requesting the investigation, the Truck Safety Coalition, along with a group of truck crash victim advocates and victim family members, alleged potential misconduct by DOT...
A coalition of safety groups want federal regulators to postpone a recent rule on truck-trailer performance standards until the new regulation can be significantly improved.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulation, scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 11, 2023, is “fatally flawed,” the safety groups assert, because it failed to consider crucial data on crashes in which passenger cars slide under the rear end of tractor-trailers due to insufficient protection on the back of...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/safety-groups-urge-nhtsa-to-reconsider-underride-guard-rule
Plans by federal regulators to issue a proposed rule requiring speed limiters on truck engines is getting pushback by a significant portion of the trucking sector.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s April notice seeking comment on the plan, which the agency aims to issue as a proposed rule for public comment in 2023, generated more than 15,000 responses. Most came from independent owner-operators and small trucking companies, which account for the majority of FMCSA’s regulated...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsas-speed-limiters-unsafe-at-any-speed
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Because of their design, tractor-trailers roll over more often than other vehicles. They have a higher center of gravity, as well as more weight that might not be evenly distributed.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, nearly half of all fatal large-truck accidents in 2019 resulted from rollovers, which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says kill hundreds of truckers each year.
Based on data from Lytx, a trucking telematics company, these are the five places...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/interstate-stretches-in-3-states-pose-greatest-rollover-risk
The biggest names in autonomous trucking scored major wins by recruiting top officials from the Trump administration into their ranks over the past 12 months. But with so much riding on shifting gears within this multibillion-dollar industry from testing to commercial production — and with former regulators able to leverage government connections to help guide policy — will safety take a back seat to profits?
At least seven top-level federal officials in position to influence truck safety policy...
https://www.freightwaves.com/trucking-trump-officials-autonomous-executives-self-driving-risk
Roadways could soon be a little safer as used trucks equipped with advanced safety technologies trickle into dealerships.
Truck makers began adding collision avoidance and automatic emergency braking as part of advanced driver assistance systems for the 2018 model year. Those trucks are being swapped for even safer models.
Carriers ordered more than 100,000 new Class 8 trucks in September, October and November.
“All those builds getting added to order boards are going to begin being delivered as...
https://s29755.pcdn.co/news/safety-could-get-a-boost-from-tech-enabled-used-truck-trade-ins
Large trucks with forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems could eliminate more than 40% of rear-end collisions, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The IIHS examined data on crashes per vehicle mile traveled from 62 carriers operating tractor-trailers and other trucks weighing at least 33,000 pounds. It found that trucks equipped with forward collision warning had 22 percent fewer crashes and trucks with AEB had 12%...
https://s29755.pcdn.co/news/iihs-truck-safety-equipment-could-cut-40-of-rear-end-collisions
John Flynn remembers the horror he felt when a Walmart truck collided with Tracy Morgan’s limousine in June 2014, injuring the comedian and killing a friend in the limo. Settlements for more than $90 million three years later were chilling in a different way.
“We started looking at safety shortly thereafter, and we were one of the first companies to put safety equipment in as, I won’t say it’s a mandate, but we told our customers we wanted to put safety [equipment] in all of the trucks,” said...
https://s29755.pcdn.co/news/selling-safer-trucks-into-a-pandemic
Heavy-hitters representing the business, safety and insurance sectors of the trucking industry are opposing Pronto AI’s request for exemption from hours-of-service (HOS) rules that the startup contends are needed to help demonstrate the safety and economic benefits of its autonomous technology.
Pronto AI’s petition, filed with federal regulators in April, seeks to allow drivers in trucks deploying the company’s technology to drive up to 13 hours within 15 hours from the beginning of their work...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/pronto-ai-faces-uphill-road-to-hos-relief
