Truck companies want feds to move faster on speed limits

The American Trucking Association is calling on the Obama administration to move faster to implement a mandate for electronic speed limit devices on the nation’s trucks. 

The Arlington, Va.-based group said Monday that the Department of Transportation is taking too long to put in a requirement that trucks have devices on-board that will limit their speeds to 65 miles-per-hour to reduce the number of accidents that occur on U.S. roads and highways. 

“In 2006, as part of our longstanding commitment to highway safety, ATA petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to require the speed limiter on all large trucks be set in order to electronically limit their top speed to no more than 65 mph,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. 

{mosads}“We waited patiently until the government finally said in January 2011 they would move ahead with a speed limiter mandate, but this commonsense regulation has been mired in bureaucracy for over four years now,” he continued. “It is long past time for NHTSA and FMCSA to move ahead with this rule.”

The ATA said a large majority of the trucking industry is already using the electronic speed devices, but the group said the Obama administration should mandate universally usage. 

“Even though roughly 70 percent of trucking companies use electronic limiters, that is not enough,” Graves said. “So we are again calling on NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind – who recently touted the benefits of speed limiters in the press, FMCSA General Counsel Scott Darling and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to move this important regulation forward. Further, I urge them to use their positions to push states to do the right thing – the safe thing – when it comes to speed limits for all vehicles and stem the dangerous tide of higher ones.”