The annual Operation Safe Driver Enforcement blitz is just around the corner! This year the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance sponsored event will take place between October 19th and October 25th.
According to the Operation Safe Driver website, the week of the blitz will see a dramatic increase in police presence on highways as law enforcement agencies nationwide take to the roads to “engage in heightened traffic safety enforcement.” Officials will be focusing on traffic enforcement, seatbelt violations, roadside inspections, and driver regulatory compliance.
Co-sponsored by the CVSA and the FMCSA, the weeklong blitz also includes educational and safety awareness events and programs aimed at both commercial drivers and the general motoring public.
The stated goal is to “combat the number of deaths resulting from crashes involving large trucks, buses and cars.”
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Source: overdrive, cvsa, gobytrucknews
Image Source: cvsa
If they want to cut down on truck related crashes so much, then how about doing a safety blitz on four wheelers because they are the biggest reason that trucks are involved in so many crashe. Everyone sees a get rich quick idea when it comes to trucks.
I agree…four wheelers cause most truck-related accidents…..people should be happy there are so many trucks on the road…if they look around their house everything they see came on a truck at some point
How many BLITZ’S do the law enforcement need? We already have it 365 days a year scrutiny. DOT needs more money, so we blitz you in the spring, we blitz you in the summer and now bend over and tie your shoes, it’s time to blitz you in the fall.
Could not have said it better.
Educate the motoring public? Yeah ok I agree with Denise it’s all about the money. We get fined for having to forget to fill on a blank spot on a log so we’re hit with a “form and manner” citation meanwhile the idiot who has to get that all important text message out and who can’t keep their 4 wheeler in their lane? Well. They didn’t see that. They never do
Well said Denise and Stan! It’s amazing what we see four wheelers do EVERY single day we drive and yet they receive no scrutiny!
I agree with all of you, it’s also a proven fact that 87% of all accidents involving Semi’s are the 4-wheelers fault. Yet there many states that many states don’t even have a yearly safety inspection for 4-wheelers.
I used to manage an automotive shop in Illinois and they are a state that does NOT have safety inspections for four wheeler’s. You would not believe some of the things I saw come into our shop, front end components so worn they were almost falling off the car and unsafe brakes were the most common. I would say 50% of the cars had tires that were worn to the point they were unsafe. No one enforces safety on four wheeler’s, But they will ticket a semi because the mud flaps are a half inch two short.
I agree, 4 wheelers need to be educated Bout big rigs but this shouldn’t be done on the highways it should be done in high schools, and before they get license. This so called “blitz” it’s just yet another way to scam truckers out of hard earned money.
For a new license, drivers – 95% teenagers – should be required to pay a fee and ride in a real truck for a full day, including highways, secondary and side roads under heavy load.
Then required to watch test crash films and study still photos of wrecks.
Almost no drivers understand a truck is 20-25 times heavier than a private vehicle and needs at LEAST 300 feet to stop on the freeway. NO IDEA.
4 Wheelers are to blame in 80-some odd percent of accidents INVOLVING them, and sure plenty of them do plenty of stupid things around us, but in the past 5 days of working, I’ve seen 5 accidents along the corridor I’ve run (Pittsburgh to Chicago) and three of them involved a truck running into (or SLAMMING into) another truck that was either broke down on the shoulder, or slowing down to exit the highway…all of them in the wee hours of the morning. A hot-shot car hauler crashing and rolling over into the median, and a steel hauler losing his load in the middle of the Tri-State (I-294) and having one coil destroy a truck in the next lane, and the other unspool down the side of the highway for a 100 yards.
Until we can clean up our own house in terms of people falling asleep while operating a CMV, and learning and IMPLEMENTING proper load restraint no amount of yelling “Pay Attention to All These CARS!!” is going to do any good.
If they did there jobs on a daily basis, they wouldn’t need a blitz I’m all for safety but advertising it only means the ones with unsafe equipment will just park it for a week. Wise up and do your job 24-7-365 like we have to.
They could save everyone a lot of time and money, if they just taught the people driving the 4 wheelers how to drive safely around commercial trucks. But that wouldn’t happen because then they couldn’t have these blitzes. It’s a win win for the government, they can bring down the population and at the same time make money by pretending they care.
It’s a little ridiculous that we have dot and almost every cop out there already gunning for us and yet they still have these blitz’s. How would they like it if we had the power to shut them down or pay fines I mean what other jobs out there have to deal with it day in and day out. I run legal my truck is in good condition and I fix anything wrong with it in a very timely manner but yet I still have to deal with these clowns because they feel the need to make us feel the wrath for them having a terrible life. It’s almost not even worth driving anymore.
My truck is compliant but I take the week off anyway. Don’t need the hassle!
While I see a lot of bad drivers in 4 wheelers, I am in agreement with James Duff. There are way too many trucks involved in crashes. I see big rigs tailgating, speeding and just plain aggressive driving every single day, when you have big rigs running at speed with way less following distance than they should, then whether a 4 wheeler or a big rig in front doing something suddenly, it doesn’t matter, there is likely going to be bad consequences.
There needs to be way more enforcement on aggressive drivers for ALL vehicles on the road.
TS
I will agree with it starts in the classroom, with both classroom instruction and practical exercise. But exactly how much of the instruction will a teenager retain is unknown, but in a me first society you can browbeat the entire populace for an innumerable amount of hours on a daily basis for months on end… to no avail. With all the special interest groups pushing on the government for highway safety, those that are the most visible are the ones that will take the brunt of the strongarm tactics of a handicapped administration. Good day
In Ohio there isn’t one sentence in the drivers license training book warning new drivers about the dangers of sharing the road with a CMV. Having said that, you can educate, but you can’t make them use the information. The various police forces need to crack down on the motoring public for all rules of the road violations, not just speeding.