Could Truck Safety Suffer with New FMCSA Chief?
Last week, President Obama’s choice of nominee for head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration began confirmation hearings, and as a New Jersey trucking accident lawyer, I am concerned about Anne Ferro's past as a trucking industry lobbyist. Ferro served as a lobbyist for the Maryland trucking industry for six years. Her nomination not surprisingly, has been criticized by trucking advocates, including the Truck Safety Coalition.
Every year 5,000 people are killed in fatal truck accidents across the US. In New Jersey, 47 people were killed in 2008 in accidents involving large trucks. Last year, Bergen County had three accident fatalities, Monmouth County had six, Ocean County had four and Passaic County had one trucking accident fatality. Salem County had the worst ratio of truck accident fatalities with an average of 3.02 people killed per 100,000 persons. With statistics like these, it becomes imperative that we have an FMCSA head who prioritizes truck safety above all else.
In the last days of the Bush Administration, a new rule increasing the number of consecutive hours that a trucker could drive was passed. That rule had been strongly opposed by New Jersey truck accident lawyers, truck safety advocates, as well as families of victims killed by accidents involving a fatigued trucker, dozing off at the wheel. I had then voiced my strong opposition to the rule. It therefore concerns me that the nominee for head of the agency, which will be responsible for laying down rules that will impact trucker and motorist safety, is a person who came out strongly in support of the extended driving hours. Ferro co-signed a letter to The Baltimore Sun, arguing strongly in support of the rule.
I am also concerned about how willing Ferro will be to initiate the kind of tough safety measures that are needed to save those 5000 lives every year. During the confirmation hearings, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey tried to get Ferro to promise that she would require trucking companies to install safety devices called Electronic On Board Recorders, that can determine and record when the truck is turned on and off, thereby helping to calculate the number of hours the trucker drives. Very often, truckers manipulate log books to be able to drive for more number of hours than the rule stipulates. However, Ferro refused to promise any such thing, and only said that she will conduct a review of the research on these devices.
11 hour driving, 10 hour sleeper and 3 hour on-duty. Any single minute less than this will actuall force truck drivers to fudge their log books so as to avoid verbal and other abuse from shippers/recivers/brokers who actually are responsible for forcing truck drivers to fudge the log books. SRB (the guilty trio), must be held liable for setting up pick-up and delivery timings that force a truck driver to take less or no rest in order to get the truck at a point where the SRB dirtbad wants it to. Also, to save time for rest, much of which is wasted going to and from a public scale for a weight reciept for axle over-weight, shippers who ship loads greater than 40,000 lbs MUST have certified truck scales on shipping property. Bring this into Law if you want safer roads and safer trucks. Cutting down the driving time will actually result in the opposite of what you are intending. Good luck.