The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced that there’s a safety blitz going on this week along the I-81 corridor. I-81 runs from Dandridge, Tennessee, to Wellesley Island, New York, at the Canadian border.
From June 20 through June 24, FMCSA, along with state and local authorities, are holding a safety campaign. The focus will be on speeding, following distance, and distracted driving. They are the usual suspects in crashes involving heavy trucks and passenger vehicles.
FMCSA has put tips for trucks, buses and passenger cars on its website. The federal agency wants to educate drivers on how to share the road with each other. Law enforcement will be watching for unsafe drivers. Expect increased pull-ins from the weigh stations and rest areas (New York has inspection stations in their rest areas).
For the 2018-2020 period, there were over 3,200 commercial motor vehicle collisions in the I-81 states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. According to FMCSA, I-81 is one of the most heavily traveled highways in the eastern United States.
And right when I thought I was done, the NHTSA gets in on the fun…
Update: as I was finishing this article, a new campaign from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has begun today. It runs from June 21 through August 14. According to their data, 11,258 commuters were killed due to speeding related accidents. Speeding was connected to 29% of traffic fatalities nationally.
Really and truthfully, there is no reason you should be speeding. Planning out your trip, both personally and professionally, is something that most people just do not do. They wait until the last minute to leave, then drive as fast as they can hold it to the road. There’s no reason for that behavior.
