Law enforcement officers issued nearly 39,000 citations and warnings to truck drivers during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Operation Safe Driver Week, held Oct. 15-21, across North America.
During the week, officers issued a total of 59,193 warnings and citations to both commercial and passenger vehicle drivers for unsafe driving behaviors, including state and local moving violations, speeding, failure to use a seatbelt, failure to obey a traffic control device, using a handheld phone and more. The majority of those – 38,878, to be exact – were issued to commercial vehicle drivers.
“Countless lives are tragically lost on our roadways due to unsafe, risky, inattentive or careless acts by drivers,” said CVSA Executive Director Collin Mooney. “In fact, driver behavior is often the most important factor in crashes. Operation Safe Driver Week raises awareness about safe driver operations in and around trucks and buses.”
Truckers were given 30,714 warnings and 8,164 citations during the enforcement blitz, 84.2 percent of which were for state and local moving violations. Speeding accounted for 7.4 percent of violations, followed by failure to use a seatbelt (2.6 percent), failure to obey a traffic control device (2.5 percent) and using a handheld phone (0.8 percent). Only a tenth of a percent of violations for truckers were for texting, CVSA says.
Additionally, 16 truckers received a warning or citation for using a radar detector, 19 received a citation for operating while ill or fatigued and 86 received a warning for the same violation.