The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) is hosting Operation Safe Driver Week from July 11-17, 2021, following the end of National Safety Month. The annual U.S. and Canadian CVSA initiative centers on safe-driving awareness and improving dangerous behaviors exhibited by passenger vehicle drivers and commercial motor vehicle drivers. Applying education and traffic enforcement strategies, enforcement personnel will be on the lookout for risky driving behavior. These behaviors will be issued a citation or warning and also recorded for future awareness and safety initiatives.
What We Can Learn from Last Year
Operation Safe Driver Week 2020 was the CVSA’s first enforcement initiative in the wake of the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. Commercial drivers received 10,736 traffic enforcement warnings and citations. Comparatively, passenger vehicle drivers received about three times as many.
The top five traffic enforcement citations issued to commercial motor vehicle drivers were related to:
- Speeding – 2,339
- Lack of seat belt use – 1,003
- Failure to obey a traffic control device – 617
- Texting or using a hand-held phone – 269
- Improper lane changing – 122
The What and Why of This Year’s Emphasis
This year’s focus, identical to last year’s, will remain on speeding. The coronavirus pandemic, which shaped our travel and traffic patterns throughout most of 2020, cleared roadways. Unfortunately, traffic fatalities increased. Speeding has remained a considerable factor in motor vehicle fatalities. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speeding was the cause behind a whopping one-third of all motor vehicle fatalities for these past two decades.
Additionally, the CVSA is also prioritizing other prominent dangerous driving behaviors. Distracted driving, which resulted in 3,142 fatalities in 2019, will be another crucial focus area. Enforcement officers are also taking last year’s results to mind and concentrating on seat belt use, improper lane changes, failure to obey traffic control devices, close following distances and drunk driving.