Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/119523
Voices Safety blame shell game The back-and-forth fingerpointing between the American Trucking Associations and advocacy groups like Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways saw a particularly pathetic entry in February. The Truck Safety Coalition, a partnership of PATT and CRASH, employed some sleight of hand by trying to divert attention away from the meat of an ATA report. That report analyzed studies conducted over a decade to conclude that four-wheelers were at fault in nearly 80 percent of car-truck crashes. The coalition's open letter to ATA disputed the very existence of reliable data on the issue. Instead, it attempted to frame the discussion around the disproportionate number of automobile occupants who die as a result of car-truck collisions. "To insist that fault cannot be determined in some accidents is to ignore the fact that it is easily determined in most," wrote Daniel McCreary, commenting at Overdrive's Facebook page. "I was involved in one of those collisions. … I was hit four feet on my side of the line by a fourwheeler." McCreary joined others in questioning the agenda of TSC: "It seems as if they're more interested in simply sticking it to truckers rather than working to Max Heine In denying the possibility of fault determination, advocacy groups ignore the majority of car-truck crashes. Truck safety activists emphasize the fatality rates of four-wheel drivers who collide with heavy trucks. help make the roads safer." Noted M. Rick Richards, "TSC, CRASH and PATT are all shills of the railroads, created to attack the trucking industry." Commenting under the story at OverdriveOnline.com, Scott Lawrence told of being rearended at 1 a.m. in Idaho. "There was absolutely nobody on the road but the two of us," he said of himself and the couple in the car that hit him. The driver was moving too fast and "fooling around with a cell phone or All of those other deaths are never addressed. — Kurt Keilhofer, commenting at OverdriveOnline.com, on the roughly 31,000 annual highway fatalities (88% of the total) that do not involve a truck. something," Lawrence said. "The four-wheeler was at fault and ticketed. … People like to blame the truck drivers because of the 'deep-pocket' insurance payouts. We are at fault because trucking companies would rather pay out on a claim than challenge it" in many cases. Gordon Alkire urged fellow owner-operators to follow his lead to "fix this folly" and "install dash cameras to verify the actions of the four-wheelers. I have one looking forward out the dash, and boy, does it capture some dumb moves by car drivers." Send videos of such action, Alkire suggested, to the authorities and anti-truck safety "experts." "PATT and CRASH need to clean their own house first," Alkire added. It is their constituents "not being educated on how to behave around trucks on our highways that causes a majority of these accidents." 4 | Overdrive | April 2013 Voices_0413.indd 4 3/28/13 12:00 PM