Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) announced that its 2017 Operation Safe Driver Week would be held during Oct. 15-21, 2017. During this event, law enforcement agencies throughout North America will engage in increased traffic safety enforcement and education that will be focused on at combating unsafe driving behaviors by commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers and passenger-vehicle drivers.
The CVSA holds Operation Safe Driver Week in partnership with the FMCSA It is supported by industry and transportation safety organizations, and aims to reduce the number of crashes, deaths and injuries involving large trucks, buses and cars due to unsafe driving behaviors. Some unsafe behaviors that enforcement will be tracking throughout the event include the following:
- Speeding
- Failure to use a seatbelt while operating a CMV or in a passenger vehicle
- Distracted driving
- Failure to obey traffic control devices
- Traveling too closely
- Improper lane changes
According the CVSA, unsafe driver behavior by CMV drivers and passenger-vehicle drivers continues to be the leading cause of crashes. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) “Large Truck Crash Causation Study” cites driver behavior as the critical reason for more than 88 percent of large truck crashes and 93 percent of passenger-vehicle crashes.
Operation Safe Driver
Operation Safe Driver is a CVSA program aimed at reducing deaths and injuries involving large trucks, buses and cars due to unsafe driver behaviors. The Alliance intends to accomplish this goal by educating both commercial motor vehicle drivers and youth drivers about ways to share the roads safely.
The Operation Safe Driver program has two main campaigns to educate drivers.
- Teens and Trucks – Our Teens and Trucks program aims to educate youth drivers about how to drive safely around a large truck or bus.
- Defeat Distracted Driving – Defeat Distracted Driving is our campaign aimed at educating commercial vehicle drivers about the dangers of distracted driving and ways to avoid becoming distracted while on our roadways.
In addition, there is an annual one-week enforcement and educational blitz held, called Operation Safe Driver Week, held every October to spotlight unsafe driving behaviors by both commercial motor vehicle drivers and car drivers in an effort to combat the number of deaths and injuries from crashes.
Operation Safe Driver holds activities across the United States, Canada and Mexico to increase commercial vehicle and non-commercial vehicle traffic enforcement, safety belt enforcement, and driver roadside inspections; improve driver regulatory compliance; implement commercial driver educational and awareness programs to the motor carrier population; educate youth about safely sharing the roads with large trucks and buses; and increase awareness to the general motoring public about safe operations around commercial motor vehicles.
CVSA – in partnership with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), state, provincial and local law enforcement, and industry – launched the Operation Safe Driver campaign in 2007 to reduce the number of deaths and injuries resulting from crashes involving large trucks, buses and cars.