Is slower automatically safer?

A common and fair criticism of regulatory agencies is their tendency to overcomplicate issues.

When it comes to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s speed limiter rulemaking, however, the agency appears to be oversimplifying the problem.

FMCSA wants fewer crashes, as does everyone involved in the trucking industry. But the agency is so fixated on the idea of slower being safer that it isn’t properly analyzing all of the factors at play.

As of press time in early February, FMCSA was projected to publish a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking in May that would require speed-limiting devices on most commercial motor vehicles weighing 26,001 pounds or more. We still don’t know what FMCSA plans to propose for a top speed, but it is safe to speculate that it will be slower than the posted speed limits on a significant portion of U.S. highways.

Oversimplification

When FMCSA released its “notice of intent” in April 2022 to resume the rulemaking, it cited statistics as justification for placing speed limiters on large vehicles.

“FMCSA is moving forward with this rulemaking because of concerns about the number of commercial motor vehicle crashes and fatalities traveling at high speeds,” the agency wrote.

The agency pointed out that in 2019, there were 860 fatal crashes in areas with posted speed limits of 70 or 75 mph and 24 fatal crashes in areas with posted speed limits of 80 mph or faster.

“Approximately 20% of fatal crashes occur in areas with posted speed limits in these ranges,” FMCSA wrote. “The rule will help reduce crashes and save lives on our nation’s roadways.”

If the oversimplification isn’t already obvious, let’s explore those stats a little deeper.

Land Line reached out to FMCSA in 2022 for more information about the crashes the agency cited. It was unable to provide data on the traveling speeds of the large trucks involved in the crashes or on whether reducing their speeds would have prevented fatalities.

The agency also couldn’t provide information on how many of the trucks involved were using speed limiters already.

In addition, FMCSA left out the important detail that this 70 to 75 mph speed limit range wasn’t the one where the most fatal crashes occurred. In 2019, there were 1,448 large-truck-related fatal crashes in areas with speed limits of 50 or 55 mph.

The reality is that without knowing the traveling speeds of the cars and trucks involved in the crashes, there’s nothing indicating that slowing the truck down would help.

Let’s use 68 mph – one of the possible top speeds FMCSA could propose – as an example.

Of the crashes that occurred in the 70 and 75 mph zones, how many of those trucks were company trucks already speed limited to 68 mph? How many of those truckers already were going 68 mph or slower to conserve fuel? And of those crashes involving truckers who were going the posted speed limit of 70 mph, how many lives would have been saved by going 2 mph slower? How many of the crashes had less to do with the speed of the truck and more to do with how fast the car was going? How many of the crashes in the 80 and 85 mph zones involved cars going 15 mph or more faster than the truck?

Now, let’s talk about those problematic 50 and 55 mph zones. How fast were the trucks going in those crashes? Even if speeding were a factor, a speed limiter mandate with a top speed of 68 mph probably wouldn’t help.

If anything, a speed limiter mandate with a top speed of 68 mph could exacerbate the problem in 50 and 55 mph zones. While truck drivers would be forced to drive well below the flow of traffic in zones of 75 mph or faster, they still would be under pressure to follow hours-of-service regulations and to meet strict delivery times. The lost time on the interstate could encourage some drivers to go faster than they should in a work zone or in areas with pedestrians.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., did a good job of explaining the scenario at a House subcommittee hearing in December.

“Many of these truckers may end up in a situation where they have to make up time,” Burlison said. “And because they have the speed limiter, the only place to make up time is in city streets, suburbs and construction zones.”

Deeper dive

A deeper dive into the 2019 statistics shows that large trucks were involved in about 12% of fatality crashes. Not only were trucks not involved in the majority of fatal crashes, but they typically were not the problem even in the crashes that involved them. According to FMCSA, 90.6% of the truck drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2019 did not receive a moving violation. Even more, the truck drivers in these cases had no driver-related factors recorded 67.1% of the time.

Conversely, only 40% of passenger vehicle drivers had no factors cited to them in fatal crashes.

It also should be noted that a large truck is defined as a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds. In 2019, about 25% of the large-truck-involved fatal crashes were attributed to ones weighing 26,000 pounds or less. Under FMCSA’s proposal, the speed limiter mandate would apply only to commercial motor vehicles weighing 26,001 pounds or more.

Speed limiters haven’t stopped speeding

One factor that seems to be lost in all of FMCSA’s motivation to equip all trucks with speed limiters is that most trucks in large fleets already use one to improve fuel efficiency.

In August, Maverick USA CEO Steve Williams noted that 98% of the 62,000 trucks operated by Trucking Alliance carriers already use speed limiters. What Williams failed to mention is that many of those trucks still have received speeding tickets.

According to information from FMCSA’s Compliance Safety Accountability website compiled in August, Maverick had 110 speeding violations in the past two years. Eighteen of those violations were for at least 15 mph faster than the speed limit. In addition, the carrier was involved in 139 reportable crashes during that span.

The Trucking Alliance is comprised of large fleets Maverick, Bison, Cargo Transporters, Dupre Logistics, J.B. Hunt, KLLM Transport Services, Knight Transportation, May Trucking Company, Schneider, Swift and U.S. Xpress. Over the past two years combined, they had 3,778 reportable crashes and 3,481 speeding violations. While the companies have a large number of trucks, the totals show that speed-limiting devices don’t put a stop to speeding or crashes.

The reality is that the highways are safer when all vehicles are traveling at the same speed. If speed limits are being violated, they should be enforced. If a highway with a fast speed zone is leading to a large number of crashes, then the state should consider lowering that speed limit for all vehicles on the road.

Join the fight

FMCSA is projected to release its speed limiter proposal in May. When it does, the agency will open the door for another round of public comments. The first phase received about 15,000 comments. Considering that everyone on the road would be affected by the regulation, that number should at least double.

OOIDA is encouraging every truck driver to file comments. In addition, it is asking truckers to support the DRIVE Act, which would stop FMCSA from moving forward with a rulemaking on speed limiters. Go to FightingForTruckers.com to join the fight against a speed limiter mandate. LL