Highway Safety

As the 6th annual Infrastructure Week concludes and we approach Memorial Day weekend, we are reminded of the importance of investing in infrastructure to ensure the highest safety standards on America’s roads. We are also reminded of the individual responsibility of all drivers when they are operating motor vehicles.

Everything in this country moves. So, a safe and efficient transportation network is vital to our economic well-being. I have made it my top priority to invest and modernize the way we move people, goods and ideas.

Rural America is far too familiar with the need for increased highway safety. Treacherous conditions created by semitrucks, cars and farm equipment converging on two-lane highways have resulted in higher fatalities than in urban areas.

Road safety products manufactured by Lindsay Transportation Solutions have saved lives and reduced risks for drivers and passengers on America’s roadways. However, realizing safer roads is a shared responsibility.

As a former owner of a pavement marking company, I always told my employees they would never read the names of the lives they saved in the paper, but their work was without a doubt saving lives. It is why, in Congress, I continue to fight for funding for roadway safety projects.

Every time we get behind the wheel, we are entering into a tacit agreement with every other driver on the road. We agree to drive safely in exchange for their agreement to also drive safely.

As we’ve said throughout Infrastructure Week, investing in our nation’s infrastructure has the power to supercharge manufacturing in America and encourages the development of products that make our families and communities safer.

As a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I’m very concerned about making our highways safer. I’m especially concerned about the impact of autonomous cars and trucks and how they’ll interact with human drivers.

GHSA projects pedestrian fatalities remained near 6,000 for the second consecutive year in 2017, a trend we cannot let continue. Education, enforcement and engineering measures must work together to address this issue.

The Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) is critical to roadway safety and reaching Toward Zero Deaths on our roadways.

ATA and the trucking industry are committed to highway safety. We work closely with our local, state and federal lawmakers, and the Administration, to advocate for proper investments in our infrastructure and increased highway safety measures. The trucking industry spends at least $9.5 billion annually on safety technology.

Across our county, millions of hardworking professional truck drivers travel America’s roads each day. Truck drivers deliver everything we rely on, including our food, clothes and medications, and work tirelessly to complete their deliveries safely and on time.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) could revolutionize highway safety, but the technology has been involved in at least three crash deaths, and numerous auto executives admit they’re years away from being ready.

It’s a saying as true as it is trite, yet too often we discount it in highway safety. Over 90% of crashes involve human error, but is that such a surprise when, “everybody makes mistakes?”

Fourteen years ago, someone made the wrong choice to drink and drive. Because of that, my son Dustin was killed. More than TEN THOUSAND people are killed every year because of this 100 percent preventable crime.