Washington DC, US: Road transport companies want tougher entry requirements for companies entering the industry.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) has urged Congress, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee last week, to adopt association initiatives to improve highway safety, including a requirement that new companies successfully complete training and an examination before being permitted to operate.
Dan England, vice chairman of the associations and president of Utah-based temperature-controlled transport company CR England called for an initial safety audit within six months not the current 18 month of commencing operations and for improvements to a new safety monitoring and measurement system, Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA).
England says: “ATA has supported CSA from the outset, however, the integrity of the system is hindered by underlying data quality and methodology issues. As such, its use as a system to reliably identify unsafe carriers and drivers is somewhat limited.”
England urged Congress to look beyond the current enforcement and compliance system as the primary means to improve truck safety. He highlighted the need to create a national system to notify employers of drivers’ violations and for a drug and alcohol test result clearinghouse, to help “leverage the size and power of the industry to achieve the mutual objective of improving highway safety.”
