Time to slow down and put that cell phone away like your mama taught you, because Operation: Safe Driver (O:SD) begins Sunday, July 10 and continues through Saturday, July 16. Back the Truck Up has the list of what law enforcement officers and CMV inspectors will be targeting. Also we have some details from last year’s O:SD week to review.
Phone down, slow down!
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Administration (CVSA), the multinational organization that coordinates truck safety initiatives across Mexico, Canada and the United States, hosts this annual safety campaign on our roads. Law enforcement will be on high alert, pulling drivers over for “educational opportunities” and writing citations for violations.
The 2022 focus is primarily speeding, a leading cause of accidents. The CVSA has a list of key reasons why speeding is the primary infraction law enforcement officers will be looking for:
- Speeding has been a factor in more than a quarter of crash deaths since 2008. (Source)
- Speeding of any kind was the most frequent driver-related crash factor for drivers of commercial motor vehicles and passenger vehicles. (Source)
- Speeding was a factor in 26% of all traffic fatalities in 2018, killing 9,378 people – an average of more than 25 people per day. (Source)
- Distracted driving claimed 3,142 lives in 2019. (Source)
- Of the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2019, 47% were not wearing seat belts. In 2017, seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts. (Source)
- Every day, about 28 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s one person every 52 minutes. In 2019, 10,142 people lost their lives due to drunk driving. (Source)
Speeding, which was also the focus of 2021’s Operation Safe Driver Week, was the top driver-behavior violation for both types of drivers. Officers issued 11,039 citations and 5,478 warnings for speeding/basic speed law/driving too fast for conditions. That’s 9,349 citations and 2,929 warnings for speed-related offenses to passenger vehicle drivers, and 1,690 speed-related citations and 2,549 warnings to commercial motor vehicle drivers.
Distracted driving is also a target
A secondary target will be distracted driving; there is a laundry list of infractions that fall under that category:
- Distracted driving
- Texting
- Failure to use a seatbelt
- Following too closely
- Improper lane change
- Reckless or aggressive driving
- Failure to obey traffic control devices
- Evidence of drunk or drugged driving
Expect to see more than the usual number of law enforcement officers sitting on overpasses, ramps, and around high traffic areas monitoring for these items. Slow moving accidents have been on the rise as of late, so they want to push hard and slow down the trend.
Here are some links to more details on Operation: Safe Driver from the CVSA website:
- General Information: https://www.cvsa.org/programs/operation-safe-driver/operation-safe-driver-week/
- Commercial Motor Vehicle Specific Information: https://www.cvsa.org/programs/operation-safe-driver/cmv-driver-resources/
