As you may be aware, Operation Safe Driver Week was held in July, with this year’s focus on speed, following a spike in both speeding tickets and single-vehicle accidents in 2020. Over the week, law enforcement captured data to provide a screenshot of driving offenses, unsafe driving practices, and violations to reflect areas of improvement. Let’s take a deeper look into these violations and how you can reduce the chances of your drivers committing common safety offenses.
What Were the Violations?
Law enforcement pulled over more than 28,000 commercial vehicles and 18,000 passenger vehicles in this year’s Operation Safe Driver Week. Out of this group, they issued 8,438 warnings – 4,420 of these were to commercial motor vehicle drivers and 4,018 to passenger vehicle drivers.
As well as the warnings, police issued 12,264 citations, of which 3,158 went to commercial drivers and 9,106 to passenger vehicle drivers. So while commercial vehicles experienced less of the brunt for citations, truck drivers raised enough eyebrows to warrant a near split down the middle for warnings.
Violations for Commercial Vehicles
Speeding was the most prominent violation issued for commercial vehicles, with 1,690 citations and 2,549 warnings issued for speeding offenses. Speeding is also one of the most controllable acts of offense; with the right programs in place, such as MVR Monitoring, trucking companies can easily protect themselves from the most common violation by knowing the risks in their company and addressing patterns of unsafe driving habits with their drivers quickly. The next most considerable portion was the failure to wear a seatbelt with 1,225 citations and 954 warnings issued by law enforcement.
Other major truck driving safety violations included:
- Disobeying traffic controls systems.
- Using handheld phones while driving.
- Improper lane changes and not providing a safe distance behind other vehicles.
State/local violations also contributed to a large number of violations, which group together vehicle violations, such as equipment breaches, expired license plates, and inoperative lights.
FMCSA’s Additional Event Targeting Trucking Companies
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) held an additional event, over seven weeks from June 7 to July 16, investigating the behaviors of trucking companies with a history of crashes and unsafe driving practices. FMCSA focused on moderate to high-risk carriers with both remote on-site and off-site investigations. From 90 high-risk and 201 moderate risk assessments, they issued 64 conditional ratings and 30 unsatisfactory ratings. From these 291 investigations, FMCSA personnel issued nine enforcements for the violation of unsafe driving.
Additionally, there are plans for three driver notices of claim, ten out-of-service orders issues, 31 carriers entering the denial of access process, and one pattern of safety violations to be reviewed. These drivers were targeted and received violations for similar unsafe driving practices as the Operation Safe Driver Week, such as speed and failure to wear a seatbelt. Many of these could have been avoided with something as simple as an MVR Monitoring program in place.
Driving trucks is dangerous business, and law enforcement is always ready to stop our operations when they need to. MVR Monitoring helps reduce instances of these violations by alerting you of unsafe driving behaviors so they can be corrected immediately to keep you and your drivers safe and your business operational all year round.
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