No Fault Crashes Will No Longer Count Against US Road Haulage Drivers

US – The country’s road haulage industry body, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), has expressed its gratitude to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for launching a pilot programme to allow carriers to have non-preventable crashes stricken from their record. Under the FMCSA’s proposed demonstration, carriers would be able to challenge certain crashes where it is plainly evident the commercial vehicle is not at fault. The FMCSA proposed to include crashes in which an opposing motorist was driving under the influence, driving the wrong direction or struck the truck in the rear or while it was properly parked.

Also included as exceptions are single vehicle accidents involving an animal strike, the horrifically titled ‘suicide by truck’ or infrastructure failure, this last more common as we have pointed out previously. The growing phenomena of in cab camera’s and other technology allows incidents to studied post event and in more detail ATA President and CEO Bill Graves, said:

“Since the FMCSA began using crash history to rate motor carriers’ safety, ATA has argued that crashes a driver could not have prevented shouldn’t be counted on a carrier’s safety record. This announced pilot project is a step toward that goal and we appreciate FMCSA adopting the ATA’s call to provide a way for carriers to strike these tragic, but non-preventable crashes from their record.”

“The ATA hopes this demonstration project is a step toward a more robust and complete system for carriers to dispute and ultimately strike crashes that were not the fault of the commercial driver. We look forward to monitoring FMCSA’s progress as they advance this important programme. By improving crash accountability and data, FMCSA can improve the performance and accuracy of the CSA monitoring system, a goal the ATA wholeheartedly supports.”

Photo: A still from the truck driver’s in cab video at the moment a car swerves directly in front of the bigger vehicle which was proceeding at a safe speed on the inside lane.