That’s “driving while texting,” of course, the latest and greatest among local and national media fouls when it comes to trucking. Fortunately, yesterday South Dakota Trucking Association President Myron L. Rau took the time to correct the misstatements made by Dustin Murphy in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper about the apparently increasing number of truck-attributable crashes in recent years, which Murphy attributed in part to texting.
Nevermind the cause, of course, if the end result is simply false, wrote Rau: “Murphy cites statistics from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s annual safety study and incorrectly stated that the number of fatalities attributed to trucks is rising. The data cited in the 2007 report actually illustrates that since 2005, fatal accidents involving trucks has decreased by more than 20 percent.”
For Rau’s full letter, follow this link.
Since the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in July released the results of a study that probed trucker talking-and-texting behavior in-cab, I’ve written about news surrounding the public focus on distracted driving here and here and here and here and here and here, in that order (emsorry for the overload: I knew it was a lot, but when I got to backtracking it just never seemed to stop — suffice to say it’s been on the minds of both those in the trucking community and the wider public lately, no doubt).
