Bigger tractor trailers would sacrifice safety for ‘productivity’
It’s not enough that thousands of Americans die or are seriously injured each year in accidents involving an 18 wheeler, tractor trailer, semi truck, big rig or other large truck. Now trucking interests want these road monsters to be even bigger — and thus more dangerous — just so they can carry bigger loads.
Your priority is the health and safety of your family while getting from point A to point B. The trucking industry’s priority is boosting bigger loads and bigger profits. Well, at least we know where it stands.
Calling for such change is the “Coalition for Transportation Productivity,” a trucking industry group whose very name suggests a cure-all remedy from spin doctors. Let’s see, your industry is involved in many highway deaths, yet you want to risk even more carnage in order to make even bigger profits? That’s simple enough: Just say it’s in the name of “productivity.” Then it will sound positive.
Actually, it doesn’t — not when such “productivity” means letting truck companies place even bigger behemoths on America’s roads and highways.
For most Americans, that kind of “productivity” at any price isn’t worth it. They’d rather be safer around rumbling and intimidating big rigs. But for the trucking industry, the fact that truck drivers survive virtually all fatal tractor trailer accident tragedies must make it easier to give safety a backseat to “productivity.”
To achieve this, the coalition is advocating new laws to enable big rigs and tractor trailers to add another axle, and thus be able to carry even bigger and heavier loads. Of course, the bigger and heavier that a truck becomes, the harder it is for that truck to maneuver and stop safely. Again, safety doesn’t seem to be part of the trucking industry’s “productivity” equation.
Instead, it wants larger loads at a time when Americans are being slaughtered by semi trucks and other lumbering leviathans which already are too big for far smaller cars.
Often, such slaughter from an 18 wheeler wreck or tractor trailer accident is due to driver fatigue. That’s because another element of truckers’ “productivity” involves tight deadlines to deliver products.
Many truck drivers work longer hours than they should, fighting off drowsiness behind the wheel so they can meet those deadlines. And this drowsiness — along with big rigs being hard-to-control — makes these drivers and vehicles an accident waiting to happen.
Of course, large truck drivers aren’t supposed to overwork themselves and drive for an extended time time without rest. But being on an honor system of self-regulation, they do so, anyway. Gotta be “productive,” you know.
For others, being productive means being aware and wary of this gambit by trucking concerns to make Americans even less safe. But at least activists like Joan Claybrook of the Truck Safety Coalition are standing up to the trucking industry on behalf of Americans’ safety.
Also joining her are personal injury lawyers and 18 wheeler accident attorneys who champion the individual over giant trucking concerns. Provided in all 50 states by USA-LegalHelpCenter.com, a semi truck accident lawyer or tractor trailer accident lawyer fights for victims’ rights not just to secure financial recovery, but to send their own message: For true “productivity” with the biggest benefit to all, big trucks should be more safe, not less.
18 wheeler, big rig, large truck, semi truck, tractor trailer