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| Oregon DOT to truckers: Be Ready Be Buckled | |||
| 05/14/2008 | |||
"We've got work to do to increase safety belt usage," said Oregon Truck Safety Program Manager David McKane. "Truckers should know that failure to wear belts is costly in terms of injuries, lost work time, and deaths. In the coming months we'll partner with law enforcement to also make it costly in terms of traffic citations and fines." ODOT's Motor Carrier Transportation Division stresses safety belt usage in its current Commercial Vehicle Safety Plan. "We've reinforced with inspectors and post-crash investigators the importance of checking safety belt usage and documenting violations," McKane said. "We're also working to educate drivers by distributing material with a “buckle-up” message during inspections and whenever we're invited to a company’s driver safety meetings." Now the Division wants to join with law enforcement partners working under the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program to ramp up enforcement. "We're certainly going to concentrate on safety belt usage during the Roadcheck exercise in the first week of June," McKane said. Roadcheck is an annual 72-hour inspection exercise that spotlights truck safety throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. When the U.S. DOT studied truck crashes in 2004, it found that almost half of the 634 truck drivers killed that year were not wearing safety belts. Of the 168 drivers who died as a result of being ejected from their trucks, 3 out of 4 of them were not wearing belts. When it examined crashes in 2006, it found 45% of truckers killed in a crash were not wearing belts. Most of the fatal crashes involved running off the road and rolling over or hitting a large stationary object, such as a tree, bridge abutment, or culvert. Many of the drivers killed were ejected from their vehicle. Educational material distributed by the U.S. DOT notes that in a frontal collision at 30 mph, an unbelted person continues to move forward into the windshield at 30 mph. This velocity is equivalent to falling from the top of a three-story building. McKane said it's difficult for Oregon to fully analyze the problem because police and civilian crash reports commonly don’t record whether or not drivers were wearing their belts. Of the total crashes in which safety belt usage is “unknown,” approximately 20% are due to police officers failing to note the information. The remaining 80% of the “unknowns” involve crashes for which police were never called to the scene and the drivers failed to note the information in their reports. (Even when drivers in non police-involved crashes say they were wearing their safety belt, it’s not known if that’s true.) In 2006, a total of 14 truck drivers were killed in crashes in Oregon. The crash reports indicate that one was wearing his safety belt, two were not wearing theirs, and usage is unknown for the remaining 11 drivers. For car drivers, the U.S. DOT estimates that nationwide 82% currently wear safety belts. Usage is estimated at 97% in Oregon, however, as it has routinely been in the top five among states with the highest rates of safety belt usage by car drivers. But truck driver usage has historically been much lower. In 2003 when it was estimated at 48%, safety officials throughout the country redoubled efforts to address the problem. Now the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration maintains an extensive Web site for its Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Program. Education and outreach materials include such things as public service announcements by race car driver Rusty Wallace -- See video and audio links to PSAs. 9 Myths About Safety Belts Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safetybelt
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