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To help motorists stay safe on the road during holidays and every other day of the year, the America’s’ Road Team Captains, an elite group of professional drivers with millions of accident-free miles between them, used their unique point of view to develop a list of safety tips for their fellow drivers.
The American Trucking Association has made five recommendations to the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to help reduce the hazards associated with driver fatigue. Research has found that truck drivers who feel fatigued will react more slowly and are likely to make more mistakes behind the wheel than drivers who are fully alert. Worst of all, fatigued drivers are at high risk of falling asleep and losing control of their vehicle.
When you’re behind the wheel, it’s not difficult to become distracted, especially on long, lonely hauls. The radio, cigarette lighter, food, drink, and an incoming call are all things that vie for your attention and beckon you to break the routine when you’re behind the wheel. But by far the most dangerous road distraction is cell phone text messaging – a distraction that kills 6,000 people every year and injures half a million more. Texting while driving is so lethal that researchers throughout the country have been conducting tests to determine why this distraction is many times riskier than drunk driving.
Truck driver Robert Morali, a longtime resident of Jackson, Mississippi, has driven more than 5 million miles for UPS over a span of 39 years and has never had an accident, reports the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. Morali’s record of perfect safety places him in a rare and elite class of drivers. Only 60 out of 102,000 UPS drivers have driven 39 years without having an accident.
Last week we reported that the American Trucking Association’s Technology and Maintenance Council (TMC) established a task force to investigate the causes of commercial truck fires and prescribe possible solutions. The issue has taken on a special urgency because truck fires today tend to be much more intense than they were when cabs sported utilitarian interiors that were less conducive to heat and flame. Modern cab and sleeper trim, new composites and flammable glues invite the small spark of an electrical short or the heat of two crossed wires to ignite a fire and engulf all parts of the truck in the blink of an eye. The TMC task hasn’t formally published its findings yet, but it has recommended a few things that drivers, carrier companies and service technicians should observe extra carefully in order to mitigate the chances of a fire breaking out.
The American Trucking Associations’ Technology and Maintenance Council (TMC) has established a Task Force to investigate the causes of commercial motor vehicle fires and to identify measures to prevent them. According to one electrical expert and Council contributor, Bruce Purkey of Purkey’s Fleet Electric, truck fires are especially dangerous in today’s trucks for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
