If the government wants to improve highway safety, it must take a new approach to regulating the trucking industry.
That was OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh’s message to Congress at a House Highways and Transit Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, July 24.
The hearing was aimed at examining the U.S. Department of Transportation’s regulatory and administrative agenda. Pugh was testifying on behalf of the trucking industry.
‘Dysfunctional regulatory environment’
Pugh said that truckers are forced to operate in a “dysfunctional regulatory environment” that favors compliance and technology over practical solutions that would improve the profession and increase safety.
“While compliance rates with the dizzying array of regulations have never been higher, there are those – including large motor carriers, shippers, safety advocates, elected officials and bureaucrats – who not only resist modernizing or eliminating needless regulations but want to impose even more impractical and ineffective rules on American truckers,” Pugh said.
In recent years, regulators and lawmakers have proposed such rules as mandating speed-limiting devices on commercial motor vehicles, requiring side underride guards and increasing a truck’s minimum liability insurance by about 500%.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association argues that such proposals are driving safe and experienced truckers out of the industry while decreasing safety and hindering America’s supply chain.
“In the end, truckers want regulations that reflect their needs and the changing dynamics of their industry,” Pugh said. “It’s time for Congress and DOT to help make trucking an appealing, safe and sustainable career by listening first to the people who make their living behind the wheel.”
Practical regulations
Instead of mandating more unreliable technology and making it more difficult for truckers to operate a successful business, Pugh suggested improving entry-level driver training standards, enforcing broker transparency and removing the longstanding overtime exemption for motor carriers.
“Let me be clear, OOIDA and our members are not anti-regulation, as some would have you believe,” Pugh said. “In fact, the opposite is true. We have a long history of supporting regulations that address critical needs in our industry and are backed by sound research and data. For decades, we have pushed for enhanced driver training requirements to ensure the men and women behind the wheel of a commercial motor vehicle are prepared to operate at the safest level. We’ve also pushed for greater broker transparency, stronger truck leasing requirements, better driver pay and more accurate and reliable safety ratings systems.”
Speed limiters
Although the hearing touched on a variety of issues in trucking and transportation, a considerable amount of time was spent discussing the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s rulemaking to require speed limiters on trucks.
In 2022, FMCSA issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that considered mandating speed limiters on commercial motor vehicles. The agency is slated to unveil a formal proposal in May 2025. While the proposed top speed hasn’t been revealed, safety groups have lobbied to limit heavy-duty trucks to 60 mph.
OOIDA contends that the requirement would hinder safety by creating dangerous speed differentials and increasing the risk of crashes between cars and trucks.
There are highways in the United States with speed limits as fast as 85 mph. Even more, the flow of traffic on interstates is often faster than the speed limit. That means the rule could lead to cars traveling 30 mph faster than trucks on the same road.
“Decades of highway research shows greater speed differentials increase interactions, such as passing or braking, between truck drivers and other road users,” Pugh wrote in his submitted testimony. “Studies have consistently demonstrated that increasing these interactions directly increases the likelihood of crashes.”
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, agreed that limiting trucks to such slow speeds would yield “negative consequences.”
“I want to remind my colleagues that DOT is considering limiting every single truck on the road to 60 miles per hour regardless of what the posted speed limit is,” Nehls said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., pushed back against criticism of a speed limiter mandate.
“In the last year for which we have data available, 20% of truck crashes occurred at speeds over 70 miles per hour, resulting in about 1,000 deaths,” Moulton said.
However, the cited statistic is a bit misleading. When FMCSA issued the speed limiter notice in 2022, it cited 2019 stats indicating that there were nearly 900 fatal crashes involving large trucks in posted speed limits of 70 mph or more.
The statistic was based on the speed limit alone, and the agency did not know how fast the trucks were going in the crashes. The agency also didn’t know how many of the trucks involved were already using speed-limiting devices.
Even more, that statistic ignores that 13.3% more fatal crashes occurred in 50 and 55 mph zones.
Pugh said that if speeding is the issue, the focus should be on slowing down cars and trucks.
“It’s been proven over and over that traffic traveling at the same speed is the safest,” Pugh said. LL
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