In The News

ATA publishes details of 18-point safety agenda

ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Trucking Associations has added the details to its highway safety agenda designed to reduce the number of highway-related fatalities and injuries for all drivers on the nation’s highways.

The recommendations were made by ATA’s Safety Task Force and adopted by ATA’s Board of Directors at the annual Management Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans earlier this month. The 18 recommendations for further reducing highway crashes among all motorists, as presented previously on The Trucker.com, can be found here.

“Safe driving and safe highways are a team effort,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. “The entire community, from motor carriers to law enforcement to the motoring public and law makers must work in concert to make our highways safe. ATA has long pursued a safety agenda. Large truck fatality and injury rates are already at their lowest point since the federal government began reporting the figures three decades ago. But we must continue to raise the bar for safety.”

The new safety policies adopted by ATA’s board of directors are designed to improve the performance of both commercial and non-commercial drivers, and make vehicles and motor carriers safer. The safety agenda follows and compliments an ATA initiative announced in May 2008 that is designed to result in a sustainable and environmentally responsible trucking industry.

These 18 safety recommendations supplement ATA’s existing safety agenda, which includes promoting greater safety belt use by commercial drivers; re-instituting a national maximum speed limit; speed governing of all new trucks; and a decade-long initiative to create a national clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results.

For more details on each of the 18 recommendations, see the full Safety Task Force Report here.