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Source: Bendix Commercial Vehicles announcement
AVON, Ohio – July 11, 2022 – There’s a reason it’s not called “Operation Safe Driverless Truck Week.”
“There is simply no bigger factor in commercial vehicle and highway safety than the person driving,” said Fred Andersky, Bendix director of Government and Industry Affairs. “And while driver assistance technologies are advancing rapidly, nothing on the road today is remotely close to fully replacing a skilled and alert driver, which is why we work so hard to provide equipment and training that enables them to perform at their best. It’s also why we thank them every chance we get, and why we support the goals of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) Operation Safe Driver Week.”
Operation Safe Driver Week – July 10-16 this year – is a safe-driving awareness and outreach initiative aimed at improving the driving behaviors of passenger vehicle drivers and commercial motor vehicle drivers. CVSA works with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) during the week to promote traffic law and safety belt enforcement, operating safely around commercial vehicles, roadside inspections, regulatory compliance, and commercial driver education.
Equipping Drivers in Support of Safety
The FMCSA’s most recent Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts report found that the number of crashes involving large trucks – particularly Class 7 and 8 vehicles – continued to climb in 2019, the most recent year for available statistics. That year, there were more than a half-million crashes involving large trucks, and more than 134,000 of them involved trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) over 26,000 pounds.
“A fully loaded combination vehicle can weigh 20-30 times more than a car, resulting in greater impact force when a collision occurs,” Andersky observed. “Avoiding these types of crashes in the first place is what will help deliver reductions in fatalities, injuries, and property damage. Along with safe driving practices, technologies like forward collision mitigation are proven to help safe drivers mitigate truck front-leading crashes, and blind spot technologies can help mitigate sideswipe incidents.
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“Even with systems like electronic stability control being mandated and truck manufacturers making collision mitigation standard, it can take years or even decades before most of the vehicles on the road are equipped with safety technologies. And that’s why we still need to focus our industry’s safety efforts on supporting drivers and their skills – along with their understanding of what technologies can and can’t do to help them on the road.”
To view the entire announcement, click HERE.
