On Memorial Day weekend, millions of Americans started their engines as the summer travel season got under way. Whether on long vacations or just weekend getaways, motorists will pack the highways until Labor Day. Sadly, we also hear about and see incidents of unprofessional behavior by some professional drivers. The trucking industry worries a lot about bad driving by its own people.
Fleets spend millions of dollars a year to train, retrain and update skills.
Drug and alcohol screenings are routinely done to try to eliminate entirely the already low incidence of substance abuse in big rigs. Electronic devices in trucks can help tell fleet managers whether drivers speed and if they have made panic stops. JDTI, a major insurer of commercial vehicles, has been laboring to persuade states to include more information in driver instruction manuals about driving safely in the vicinity of large vehicles. The more they know about these differences, the safer everyone will be. Trucking is getting safer .