Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws calls for more trucking regulations

In addition to the hundreds of state laws, this year’s Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws calls for more federal mandates on vehicles, including trucks.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety’s 19th annual Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws claims that every state and the District of Columbia needs to adopt all 16 of its safety laws “to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce health care and other costs.” So far, no state has received a perfect score.

The safety group also is urging Congress to enact numerous federal regulations in the name of highway safety. Among those regulations are several mandates for large trucks that the trucking industry has opposed for years if not decades.

Mandates for speed limiters, underride guards and automatic brakes

Although the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws focuses on state laws, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety also gets into federal territory by suggesting a wide range of new regulations.

The report calls for “available safety technologies” that are already required in the European Union. Those technologies include automatic emergency braking and speed limiters. Advocates claim those two additions to trucks “could be preventing crashes and saving lives if required as standard equipment.”

However, the trucking industry has warned the public, including Congress, about those technologies. Last June, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association opposed an automatic braking mandate in the Senate’s highway bill. Jay Grimes, OOIDA’s director of federal affairs, told Land Line Now that the Association remains opposed to any mandates calling for the technology.

“This technology is not perfected yet,” Grimes said. “We still see a lot of errors and problems with it. A rushed mandate is certainly not the direction we think things should be going in terms of safety.”

In May, OOIDA opposed a speed limiter mandate introduced by Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., and Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y. Just a few months before, OOIDA President Todd Spencer sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warning him of a notice of proposed rulemaking requiring speed limiters.

“Decades of highway research show greater speed differentials increase interactions between truck drivers and other road users,” Spencer stated in the letter. “Studies have consistently demonstrated that increasing interactions between vehicles directly increases the likelihood of crashes.”

The Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws also criticizes the $1 trillion infrastructure bill for either including or omitting certain provisions related to trucking.

Although the bill requires an update of the rear underride guard standard, it does not include any requirements for side and front guards, much to Advocates’ dismay.

Last March, OOIDA opposed legislation reintroduced by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called the Stop Underrides Act. That bill would require front and side underride guards. However, OOIDA says there is no evidence they would increase safety.

“Over the last several years, NHTSA has considered numerous options involving side underride guards but has consistently concluded federal mandates would be impractical and costly, thus outweighing any perceived safety benefits,” OOIDA stated in comments regarding underrides. “Any proposals to mandate side underrides disregards this reality and ignores the safety, economic, and operational concerns that have been raised by industry stakeholders.”

One part of the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws that OOIDA can get behind is criticism of a pilot program for teen truckers to drive interstate.

“Experience tells us many of the entities pushing for the change in the current age requirement would simply use it to take advantage of a new pool of drivers – teenagers, who would be subjected to poor working conditions, predatory lease-to-own schemes, and woefully inadequate compensation,” OOIDA wrote in comments regarding the pilot program.

On the other hand, the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws calls for federal regulations for passenger vehicles as well, including:

• Advanced driver assistance systems, also known as collision avoidance technologies, standard in all new vehicles.
• Automated enforcement, i.e., red light/speed cameras.
• Autonomous vehicles.
• Advanced impaired driving prevention technology.
• Rear seat safety

Most states fall short of optimal safety

According to the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws, the vast majority states have a yellow or red rating based on a traffic light red/yellow/green rating.

Only eight states have a green rating: California, Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

More than 30 states are in the yellow range, with 11 in the red.

Red states include Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming.

Missouri and Wyoming are tied for having the fewest optimal traffic safety laws, with only three of 16 in the books. Conversely, three states have 13 of the traffic laws enacted, the most among all 50 states and D.C.: New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. Despite the number of laws, New Jersey has a yellow rating.

No state has a perfect score on the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws.

The Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws looks for 16 state traffic laws:

• Primary enforcement front seat belt law.
• Primary enforcement rear seat belt law.
• All-rider motorcycle helmet law.
• Rear-facing child seats through age 2.
• Booster seat law.
• Minimum age 16 for learner’s permit.
• Six-month holding period provision (teen drivers).
• 50 hours of supervised driving provision (teen drivers).
• Nighttime driving restriction (teen drivers).
• Passenger restrictions (teen drivers).
• Age 18 unrestricted license.
• All-offender ignition interlocks.
• Child endangerment law.
• Open container law.
• All-driver text messaging restriction.
• Graduated Driver’s License phone restriction.

Of those laws, only two states (South Dakota and Vermont) are missing child endangerment laws. Meanwhile, every state except Arkansas and New Jersey allows an unrestricted license for drivers under 18.

To receive a perfect score nationwide, states need to enact a total of 400 traffic safety laws, according to the Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws.

Click here for the full report. LL