AAA Opens Its Mind; Will Others Follow?

Traditionally anti-truck groups need to heed the facts: cars cause most wrecks.

DOUG CONDRA
EDITOR

      News item: Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT) and Citizens for Reliable And Safe Highways (CRASH) are joining forces in Washington. There, they will cooperate in a lobbying group called the Truck Safety Coalition.
      The bad news is that they'll be better able to collar legislators and regulators and say bad things about trucking.
      The good news is that — if they're amenable to working with the industry toward safety solutions —trucking interests should be more accessible to them, and vice-versa.
      Plans are for the coalition to hire an executive director/lobbyist to run it. The two sponsor organizations will maintain separate operations (PATT is headquartered in Maine, CRASH is in California).
      PATT, which provides truck accident victim and family support, favors strict truck safety rules, especially anything related to truck driver fatigue.
      CRASH, once a railroad-funded truck adversary, is now also largely a victims and survivors support group that continues to campaign for tougher truck safety regulations and — as always — against truck size/weight increases.
      Expect them to be more active than ever in pushing for truck driver hours of service changes, requiring black boxes on trucks, stiffer equipment standards and more truck parking spaces.
      Past relationships between trucking and these two groups have not exactly bred compromise. Their interface to date might be better likened to a couple of Mideast factions we know, only without the guns.
      But there's an encouraging development in the quest for voices of reason in the truck safety debate, and it's from a surprising source: the American Automobile Assn. Foundation for Traffic Safety.
      As reported in this magazine last month, the foundation has released results of a study based on Department of Transportation research. It reveals that in fatal car-truck accidents:
      • The car driver was cited for mistakes in 71% of the crashes.
      • Car drivers were cited for fatigue 87% of the time, compared to truck drivers' 13%.
      • Improper following citations went to 73% of car drivers, compared to 26% for truckers.
      It goes on, but the point is made — by an organization that has never cut the trucking industry any slack — that automobile drivers are the weakest link in accident causation. The fact that the AAA Foundation went public with its findings is a breakthrough, and it's something the anti-truck factions should pay attention to.
      If they're really interested in lowering truck accident fatalities, just regulating trucks and truck drivers isn't going to get it done. It's time to focus on solving the whole problem.
      That includes better automobile driver training (we hear the AAA Foundation is working on that, using its new information). Solutions will require compromise, rather than rhetoric. Compromise will require open minds within the new Truck Safety Coalition.
      I hope they surprise us.