Federal safety board renews push for new technology to reduce truck crashes

The National Transportation Safety Board has renewed its push for new safety equipment designed to prevent crashes involving large trucks, following the largest number of deaths in almost 40 years.

The effort followed the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s preliminary 2021 statistics showing 5,601 deaths from crashes involving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds. That was a 13% increase over 2020 and the most since the 5,613 fatalities recorded in 1985.

The safety board recently renewed for a third year its list of most wanted safety improvements first released in 2021. They included requirements that the federal government set standards for speed limiting and collision warning devices in trucks, and require them to be installed and used.

“Adopting NTSB safety recommendations associated with these safety items will save lives,” the board said.

The board said extending the most wanted list for a third year would “provide more time to accomplish the goals” recommended by the agency.

“We know what the solutions are,” said Tara Gill, senior director of advocacy and state legislation for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of consumer, health, law enforcement and insurance industry groups. “We need to take action. It’s the lack of action that’s producing just the incredibly high number of traffic fatalities.”

Federal transportation officials had no immediate comment.

Traffic deaths, not just from truck accidents, also rose in 2022. New Jersey State Police reported Friday that 698 people died in crashes in the state this year. That was up from 697 fatalities a year ago, which was the highest since 2007.

NJ Advance Media reported in January 2021 that recommended safety improvements, including those on the safety board’s most wanted list, were ignored for years despite increases in deaths in crashes involving large trucks.

“We hope they stay a priority until we see new regulations come out that require them,” said Harry Adler, co-chair and principal of the Institute for Safer Trucking, a safety advocacy group.

President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law required automated braking systems for trucks heavier than 26,000 pounds, as well as new standards for rear underguards and a study to see whether side guards were needed as well to prevent cars from being wedged underneath trucks. The U.S. Transportation Department’s new safety strategy recommended those steps.

But the law did not require braking systems for large trucks weighing between 10,000 and 26,000 pounds, nor did it include lane-warning devices or collision avoidance systems. And several other safety board recommendations also were missing from the safety strategy.

Still, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced in May that it would resume looking at requiring speed limiting systems in trucks weighing more than 26,000 pounds. Both the motor carrier and highway safety agencies first raised the issue in 2011 and announced five years later, in 2016, that they were developing regulations. Nothing happened until the May announcement.

The safety board first recommended speed limiters in 1995, and added it to its most-wanted list of safety improvements in 2019.

“We’ve seen a lot of plans and vision for action,” Gill said. “We’re still waiting for the action.”

The announcement drew 15,661 comments. One of them came from Todd Spencer, president and chief executive of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, an industry group, in opposition to speed limiting devices.

“They are counterproductive to highway safety, will exacerbate supply chain challenges, and won’t help retain or recruit drivers,” Spencer wrote. “Speed limiters take control of the truck away from drivers, denying them the ability to avoid accidents and unsafe road/traffic conditions.”

Adler said that from 2011 to 2020, fatalities in crashes involving trucks traveling at least 75 miles per hour rose 164%. Deaths linked to trucks traveling 70 mph or slower rose 29% during the same period, he said.

“Speed limiters are going to be a real game changer,” Adler said. “The fact that we still don’t require them to be used is — there’s no other word for it — ludicrous. When you look at truck crash deaths, you start to see that speeding is a real problem for truck safety.”

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.

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