Truck Safety Could be Improved in Columbia, SC

In Columbia, Anderson, Rock Hill, Sumter, and Georgetown, truck safety is an important issue because truck accidents can be very serious or even fatal. Trucks can weigh up to 80,000 pounds and the impact of a crash with a truck is devastating. This is why a truck accident lawyer knows how essential it is that effective regulations are in place to ensure that truck drivers and trucking companies do everything possible to avoid collisions and keep the public safe from harm.

Unfortunately, the current regulations may be lacking in many important ways and there is lots of room for improvement when it comes to truck safety.

Truck Safety: Areas for Improvement

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recognizes that there is much more that should be done in order to try to make trucks and trucking companies as safe as possible. In fact, the agency has determined that new truck safety rules are on its “Most Wanted” list. Every year, a “Most Wanted” list is published by the NTSB that will set the agency agenda for the coming year and that highlights areas not just that the NTSB wants to focus on but that it also hopes lawmakers and legislatures will focus on as well.

The person nominated to be the new chairman of the NTSB has spoken out and intends to try to approach truck safety improvements through a “broad spectrum” of new policy adoptions such as making sure that truck drivers are medically fit to drive, and improving the regulations that apply to the maintenance of large vehicles.

The NTSB could do much more and set a much more ambitious agenda when it comes to trying to reduce the chances of truck crashes. In fact, the American Trucking Association testified recently before a Senate subcommittee to make some suggestions for what should be done to improve safety. Tire Business reports that the ATA suggests that:

• All large trucks be required to use speed limiters.
• Instead of so much emphasis on roadside inspections to look for violations, the focus should instead shift to enforcing on-road traffic rules and driver behaviors on the roads.
• Incentives should be put into place in order to encourage the use of crash avoidance technologies including lane departure systems as well as frontal crash warning systems.
• New training rules and policies should be established that are more focused on making sure drivers comprehend training and have the necessary skills, rather than simply focusing on how many hours of training the tucker has received.
• Improving the Compliance, Safety, Accountable system, which needs to be better able to focus on carriers considered higher risk.
• Monitoring the impact of recent changes to hours-of-service rules. These rules used to require truckers to rest for two overnights between 1:00 and 5:00 during a rest break when they’ve reached their maximum weekly drive time; however, this rule was recently suspended by an amendment to the congressional budget. The impact of the suspension of this rule should deb evaluated.

If lawmakers took the advice of the ATA and took the advice of the NTSB to make truck safety rules part of its “most wanted” list of things to get done this year, perhaps many truck accidents could be prevented.

South Carolina truck accident victims should contact attorney Chad McGowan of McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC at 803-327-7800 or visit https://www.mcgowanhood.com for a free case consultation. Serving Columbia, SC, Anderson, SC, Rock Hill, SC, Sumter, SC, and Georgetown, SC, and surrounding areas.