Digging deeper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this year, following a pair of accidents on I-16 that killed 10 people, found a sharp increase in crashes involving commercial vehicles in Georgia. To see that analysis, go to MyAJC.com.
With truck crashes on the rise in Georgia and elsewhere, highway safety advocates are expressing alarm that a massive transportation bill working its way through Congress will relax safety standards.
The U.S. House on Thursday easily passed a $325 billion transportation policy bill that touched all corners of the industry and was what Cathy Chase of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety called a “huge lost opportunity to advance safety.”
It would get rid of mandatory rest breaks for truckers in certain states, take federal safety ratings down from the Internet and allow truck drivers younger than 21 to cross state lines.
But to the bill’s supporters and the trucking industry, those changes will not hamper safety: The rest break provision allows one federal standard for truckers to follow in all 50 states, critics say the federal safety database is woefully misleading, and younger truck drivers help address a shortage.
“Some of these safety issues are black and white when you make it a partisan fight, but they really have shades of gray when you look at it closer,” said U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall, a Lawrenceville Republican and member of the Transportation Committee.
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that the rate of commercial vehicle crashes in Georgia jumped 38 percent between 2011 and 2013, the most recent year available. The rate was calculated per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, to take into account traffic fluctuation.
A pair of crashes involving trucks this spring on I-16 near Savannah killed 10 people, including five nursing students from Georgia Southern University.
The crashes provoked a deluge of grief in the district of U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a Pooler Republican, who said he is concerned about truck safety. But Carter said the remedies proposed by safety groups are not always best.
For example, Carter supported a failed amendment that would have pushed the maximum weight from 80,000 pounds to 91,000 pounds. The reason was because he would rather have super-heavy trucks on interstates than state roads.
“The weight issue is something that we’ve been struggling with in South Georgia for quite some time,” Carter said.
“We’ve got a big pulp and paper industry, a lot of logging, a lot of logging trucks. Of course, those are some of the most dangerous trucks on the road, too. The question is: Do you want them on the federal highways or do you want them on the state highways? Which one is safer?”
The measure’s defeat was the biggest win for safety advocates in a freewheeling amendment process that had the House staging a string of late-night votes this week.
“That was a tremendous safety victory,” Chase said. “However, again, there wasn’t any (safety) advancement in the bill.”
The advocates lost the vote on an amendment put up by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, to block the ability of truck drivers from ages 18 to 21 to cross state lines.
“To have 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds driving these very large trucks, 80,000 pounds, and all these young people, they’re not as careful,” Lewis said.
The industry also triumphed on a bid to prevent state-based rules in California and elsewhere on meal and rest breaks from applying to truckers, in light of a court ruling. The industry said the federal government's rest standard for truckers should apply across the country.
In addition, the House bill would take down scores from the federal government's Compliance, Safety and Accountability database from public view. The industry says the ratings for trucking and bus companies are misleading. For example, it docks companies for accidents in which they are not at fault.
“The safety community is not opposed to making changes to the CSA program,” Chase said. “In fact, we’ve helped (the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) to make changes, but we are opposed to pulling these scores down when they are effectively showing the public how these trucking and bus companies are performing.”
Despite sometimes heated amendment debate on the floor, the overall bill passed by a wide margin. The only one of Georgia's 14 House members to vote against it was U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, a Monroe Republican.
The bill now goes to conference committee with a Senate version that passed earlier this year. It would be the first long-term highway funding bill to become law in a decade, but serious hurdles remain.
Among them is the fact that the bill funds three years of construction for six years of policy, as there is no consensus on how to fill in the gap between gas tax revenue and construction needs. The fate of the controversial Export-Import Bank is also tied into the negotiations.
And there is a deadline coming up, with the highway trust fund slated to run out of money Nov. 20 and the Georgia Department of Transportation already delaying bids for December projects because of the uncertainty.
Woodall is among the members who will be ironing out the differences on the conference committee.
“The real challenge for us who care about transportation, who care about certainty for localities, is making sure the transportation title doesn’t get derailed in all the other conversations,” he said.
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