AnnaLeah & Mary were so full of life and had so much of it left to live when they were killed, at 17 & 13, in an accident involving 2 semi trucks on May 4, 2013. Their lives—like so many others—might have been spared if changes were made in truck safety regulations.
On May 5, 2014, we will be driving to Washington, D.C. and delivering signed petitions, each one put in an individual envelope—purple (remembering AnnaLeah) and orange (remembering Mary), to the Department of Transportation.
We will be letting Secretary Foxx know that he is receiving these petitions as a reminder of lives lost in truck-related crashes, and also of his statement, “I can promise you tangible progress within a short period of time,” which he made to the Truck Safety Coalition, when we met with him regarding vital truck safety issues on September 12, 2013.
We are specifically asking Foxx to:
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Raise minimum levels of insurance required for truck drivers–which has not been done for over 30 years.
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Decrease driver fatigue and monitor their hours on the road with Electronic Logging Devices.
- Take needed steps to improve underride guards, which prevent vehicles from sliding under trucks–causing horrific injuries and tragic deaths.
Please sign and then share this petition! http://bit.ly/1gN3jQf
Show our government we want safe roads.
For more information on truck safety issues and to sign up for Truck Safety Coalition’s newsletters and updates, please visit the TSC website: http://trucksafety.org/
First of all, please accept my condolences for your loss. Lives lost on the highways of this country are always a tragedy. That being said, I would like to express a few issues that it appears are being overlooked in this campaign. First and foremost is that the vast majority of semi truck drivers are not the cause of collisions involving both trucks and passenger vehicles. I would wager that overwhelmingly the number of accidents involving trucks and passenger vehicles, there is a passenger vehicle at fault. My husband is a truck driver and I’ve ridden in his truck. I can tell you from first hand experience that a very large number of drivers of passenger vehicles do stupid and dangerous things when driving near a truck. Large trucks can carry loads up to 45,000 pounds. They aren’t able to stop anywhere near as fast as a car can and they frequently have to make wide turns at corners. I have seen cars tailgating trucks, riding alongside the trailer for miles, cutting the truck off in order to get in front of the truck, slamming brakes on in front of a truck and a myriad of other very dangerous and frankly, stupid, behavior. It is very unfortunate that many times, other vehicles that have nothing to do with the stupid behavior of a passenger vehicle driver is involved in whatever accident occurs due to close proximity to the offending passenger vehicle. All of the major trucking firms are in the process of switching over to an electronic logging system. I would guess that the ones that aren’t are owner-operators and the DOT should be able to exercise some oversight on that front I would think. I understand where you are coming from, but to imply that the semi truck driver is always at fault in an accident situation is just plain wrong.