The trucking industry needs to answer the same question which Senator Robert Kennedy posed to GM in 1965: “What was your profit in 2015? And how much money did you spend on safety research in 2015?”
GM’s answer was a safety expenditure figure that was below 1% of their total profit. Which, in my book, makes “safety” a meaningless word.
Yesterday, I received a reply from FedEx, after following their procedure for requesting a donation. Our non-profit, AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety, completed a FedEx charitable assistance application in which we asked them to donate a used, decommissioned 53′ trailer to be used for underride research.
Like in the research undertaken this spring by Aaron Kiefer to crash test his innovative side/rear underride guard protection system. Like the kind of safety measure which could have prevented Joshua Brown from being killed when his Tesla underrode the side of a trailer.
They denied our request. What was FedEx’s reason for denying our request? FedEx email denying safety research trailer donation request
Good day Marianne,
Thank you again for contacting FedEx Freight for charitable assistance. We applaud the work AnnaLeah & Mary for Truck Safety is doing.
After careful review, unfortunately, we must decline your request for the donation of a 53′ trailer.
FedEx Freight works directly with manufacturers and national organizations to support road safety for both our team members and the motoring public.
We wish you success with future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Iris
Iris Coetzee, Senior Communications Specialist
Bah humbug! I would like to know exactly how they work directly with manufacturers and national organizations to support road safety. Spell it out for me. Tell me exactly:
- How much money they spend on safety.
- and what percentage that amount is of their total profit.
- and exactly what that money actually goes for.
I would like to know that information about the whole trucking industry which has opposed and resisted improved underride protection for decades resulting in countless dead people who didn’t have to die if only the trucking industry had acted in a timely and responsible way. And not just for 2015, but for every year since the underride problem was discovered.
I put together a chart for recording that kind of information juxtapositioned against some of the major life events which occurred for me during all of the years when — for the most part as far as I can see the trucking industry did practically nothing “to support road safety for both our team members and the motoring public” — at least in the area of underride prevention. And when they did, it was because we put pressure on their pocketbook.
I’d like to see some investigative reporter dig up this kind of information because I doubt that the industry would give it to me.
