October 25, 2018—Road Safe America on Thursday released the results of a national survey showing that voters across the U.S. strongly support the required use of two existing safety technologies in large trucks, speed limiters and automatic emergency braking.
New crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revealed that 4,761 people lost their lives in truck crashes on U.S. highways in 2017. The NHTSA data shows a 41 percent increase from an all-time low in 2009.
Results from the survey show:
- 79 percent of voters favor speed limiters set at a maximum speed of 65 miles per hour for large trucks, 45 percent strongly favor it and only 13 percent oppose it.
- 82 percent of voters favor automatic emergency braking, 50 percent strongly favor it and just 9 percent oppose it.
Speed limiter technology has existed for decades and is standard capability in all big rigs manufactured since 1992, yet its use in the United States is not required.
A study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration concluded that big-rigs not using their built-in speed governors were involved in high-speed collisions at twice the rate of trucks that were using them.
NHTSA estimates that current generation automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems can prevent more than 2,500 crashes each year. NHTSA granted a petition in 2015 to initiate rulemaking that would require AEB in all trucks; but the agency has missed the deadline for a final report that was due in September 2018.
