Federal regulators have passed a rule requiring new semi trucks to have a device that would limit their speed to 60, 65, or 68 m.p.h. It won’t go into effect until next year, which has the agencies worried that Donald Trump might kill the regulations.
Read the story after the jump, considering the pros and cons. Do you think the safety considerations are the kind of thing that the federal government should regulate? Or do you think this is an over-reach? Do you think Trump will kill the regulation?
From Tom Krisher, Safety advocates fear truck speed limiter rule could stall, Associated Press:
Highway safety advocates are worried that a government rule that would electronically limit speeds of tractor-trailers could be scuttled or ignored by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
The rule proposed by two federal agencies would cap the speed of newly manufactured trucks at 60, 65 or 68 miles per hour. A public comment period ended earlier this month. Safety advocates had petitioned for it in 2006, saying it would make highways safer, and they were hoping it would be in place before the Obama administration leaves office in January. . . .
Steve Owings, co-founder of Road Safe America, who originally proposed the rule, said advocates will reach out to the new administration to keep the regulation going. “This, as well as other needed changes, certainly fits the description of ‘common sense’ which the president-elect has spoken of recently,” said Owings, whose son was killed by a speeding truck while returning to college in 2002.
Regulators and others favoring speed limiters say the rule is supported by simple physics: If trucks travel slower, the impact of a crash will be less severe and fewer people will be injured or killed. The rule is supported by the American Trucking Associations, the largest group of trucking companies in the nation. NHTSA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration have to decide whether to proceed with the regulation and what speed that trucks would be limited to.
But independent truckers, many of whom filed comments against the rule, say the government is actually creating conditions for more collisions by focusing on the severity of the crash while ignoring the dynamic of trucks and cars traveling at different speeds. They warn of traffic jams caused by slower trucks and of a potential increase in crashes because fast-moving cars can hit the rear of trucks.
[Keep reading. . .]
I suspect another unintended consequence would be that truckers would hold onto their old, rusting, polluting vehicles rather than buy new vehicles with their speed limiters.
Photo credit: I, PRA [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Federal regulators have passed a rule requiring new semi trucks to have a device that would limit their speed to 60, 65, or 68 m.p.h. It won’t go into effect until next year, which has the agencies worried that Donald Trump might kill the regulations.
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