June | 2014 | AnnaLeah & Mary

UPDATE at 7:30 p.m.: The Daines Amendment passed 214-212; next steps will be announced tomorrow hopefully.

We have some tentative good news. At least for right now, there are no amendments scheduled to be brought up in the House today to suspend the HOS restart provision or to permit 33 foot double trailers. The recent tragic crashes in California and New Jersey brought a lot of attention to truck safety issues, and along with your support, helped to push back these dangerous provisions……for now.

But, we need your help to stop an ANTI-TRUCK SAFETY move in Congress this morning—an attempt to block any increase in truck driver minimum insurance requirements (one of the requests in our Petition).

This morning, the House of Representatives will vote on amendments to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Bill Fiscal Year 2015. Congressman Daines (R-MT) is offering an anti-truck safety amendment to block any increase in minimum insurance requirements for truck carriers.

Voting starts at 1:30 (Eastern) this afternoon, June 10.

Every year on average 4,000 people die in truck crashes and 100,000 more are injured at a cost of at least $87 billion.

Crashes involving multiple deaths and injuries, similar to the recent tragic crashes in New Jersey and California, happen every week. The total combined damages from these crashes far exceed the current minimum insurance requirements.

The families who suffer terrible losses and injuries should not have to also bear the financial burden of these crashes.

TAKE action now:

Please call your Congressman ASAP and Urge them to:

REJECT THE DAINES AMENDMENT WHICH WOULD BLOCK AN INCREASE TO MINIMUM INSURANCE REQUIREMENTS

To find your Representative and their contact information, please click http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/.

Talking Points:

We urge you to oppose the Daines amendment that would block an increase in minimum insurance requirements for motor carriers in the THUD bill (H.R. 4745) for fiscal year 2015.

Minimum Insurance Levels for Motor Carriers Need to be Increased:

Minimum levels of insurance for trucks, currently set at $750,000, have not been increased in over 30 years and are woefully insufficient.
Consequently a portion of the damages and losses caused by motor carriers who carry insurance at or near the minimum is imposed upon the American motoring public.
The underinsured segments of the industry are effectively subsidized by American taxpayers through unreimbursed social welfare programs including Medicaid and Social Security.
If all of the industry were required to absorb more of the losses they cause, significant changes in the industry would occur, resulting in safer highways for all.

FMCSA Report Supports an Increase in Minimum Financial Responsibility:

In April 2014, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released a report on its review of minimum financial responsibility that found current levels to be inadequate.
It found that costs for severe and critical injury crashes can easily exceed $1 million, that current limits do not adequately cover catastrophic crashes and acknowledged that medical care inflation would increase levels to at least $3.2 million.

Additional Reports Support Increasing Minimum Financial Responsibility:

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) – This report found that the upper range for liability awards involving death or catastrophic injury is $9-10 million, and recommended that DOT set limits per crash of at least $10 million.
Trucking Alliance Review of Crash Settlements – Member companies of the Trucking Alliance voluntarily tracked 8,692 accident settlements between 2005 and 2011. According to the Trucking Alliance, 42 percent of the injury claims could have had no avenue for offsetting all medical costs.

The Daines amendment would inappropriately block a regulatory process that Congress directed.:

Congress gave the DOT Secretary and FMCSA the authority to review the minimum insurance level, and the rule making process, including public comments, should be respected and followed.
MAP-21 directed the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to review minimum financial responsibility requirements for motor carriers. The Daines amendment would inappropriately block changes necessitated by this review.

The losses of lives and injuries in the recent tragic crashes in California and in New Jersey are just two examples of the potential for large damages in truck crashes.

The American public should not be forced to subsidize the damages in these crashes.

OPPOSE THE DAINES AMENDMENT

I would like to know the truth of the matter regarding yesterday’s Amendment to the THUD (Transportation, Housing, & Urban Development) bill suspending the 34 Hour Restart Rule for truck drivers for a year while a study is conducted, as well as the requirement for truckers to have two consecutive nights with sleep during the 1-5 a.m. time period.

The American Trucking Associations are saying that there have been unintended consequences due to those two provisions of DOT’s Hours of Service (HOS) rule implemented last July. ATA says that, “…the motor carrier industry’s safety performance while operating under the former 34-hour restart rule from 2004 through 2012 (latest data available). The number of truck-involved fatalities dropped by 21 percent between 2004 through 2012, and the number of truck-involved injuries dropped by 20 percent over the same timeframe. The only publicly available fatigue-related data from the Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents database (now discontinued due to lac of US DOT funding) showed a very low percentage of fatal crashes involved fatigue–less than 2% with the latest year (2009) coming in at 1.4%.” (Taken from a letter sent by the ATA on June 3, 2014, to the chairs and co-chairs of the Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, & Urban Development, & Related Agencies)

On the other hand, Anne Ferro (FMCSA) says this: “Since 2009, we’ve seen an 18 percent increase in large truck crash fatalities. To put that in perspective, in one year alone, large trucks were involved in 317,000 traffic crashes resulting in an average of 75 deaths per week. That’s 11 per day.”

According to Ferro, the proposed amendment would cause a setback in DOT attempts to decrease driver fatigue and truck crash fatalities. Read more here: http://1.usa.gov/1hzbF59

Anne Ferro also said: “Fatigue is under-reported in crash accounts because drivers often don’t want to admit to being at-fault or sleepy. However, we know that driver fatigue is a leading factor in large truck crashes; in fact, analysis has shown that upward of 13 percent of commercial drivers involved in a crash were considered to have been fatigued at the time of that crash.”

What is the truth?

Truck Driver Fatigue: 1.4% vs 13%

Truck-Related Fatalities: Dropped 21% vs Increased 18%

I don’t know. But I do know that there were 2 horrific deaths caused by a truck driver on May 4, 2013 near Greensboro, Georgia. And I hear of many more all too often.

In our crash, log books were never found and the issue of driver fatigue was not even mentioned in the SCRTE Crash Report put together by the Georgia State Patrol. The fact that there were no log books is not affecting the charges one iota.

In addition, in many truck crash fatalities, the truck driver survives and the driver/passengers in the other vehicle do not. The victim cannot offer any input. In our case, I am alive to question what happened.

Senators on the Appropriations Committee were asked to make a quick decision based on the presentation by Senator Collins and the debate they heard over the course of less than half an hour. Many of them were confused about this issue.

The American Trucking Associations claim that those two restrictions–34-hr. restart provision and sleeping 2 nights from 1-5 a.m. have caused truckers to put more trucks on the road during congested daytime hours and that this is causing more accidents. Is this the truth?

* “Why Congress shouldn’t roll back safety provisions set in place to keep tired truckers off the road”: http://1.usa.gov/1hzbF59

* “Administration to Congress: Leave trucker schedule rules alone.” Read more: http://bit.ly/1ktZuXA

You can hear the half-hour debate & vote over this Amendment at the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting on June 5, 2014: http://youtu.be/JeuOqy_lOEc

( Video clips of AnnaLeah and Mary during their life. Audio: Recording of the public livestream of the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting on June 5, 2014, when an amendment was introduced and passed to suspend two of the components of the HOS rules for truck drivers.)