WHISTLER, B.C. — Earlier this month, the American Trucking Associations took their safety message to Capitol Hill, the next stop was B.C.

The ATA made their big announcement stateside on June 9, and just four days, David Osiecki, vice-president of Safety and Security for the ATA, made a presentation during the B.C. Trucking Association’s management conference.

The new highway safety agenda of the U.S. association has 18 policies, which are aimed at all highway users to improve driver performance, creating safer vehicles, and improving carrier performance.

“While the trucking industry is now the safest it has been since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping crash statistics in 1975, we must continue to further the trend,” said ATA president and CEO Bill Graves, during the June 9 announcement.

For ATA’s entire safety report with detailed explanations of the 18 initiatives, click here. Of the 18 initiatives, 10 focus on driver performance.

“About 88 – 90 percent of the time collisions have to do with human actions,” Osiecki explains.

Osiecki wasn’t specifically talking about truckers, or even collisions involving just trucks, but the fact that human error is a leading cause in all motor vehicle collisions. He also pointed out that some of the initiatives aren’t just designed to improve the safety record of truckers, but the safety of all highway motorists, like supporting increased use of red light cameras, graduated licensing standards in all states for non-commercial teen drivers, and more stringent laws to reduce drinking and driving.

A couple of items that were not on the safety agenda brought questions from the crowd, like EOBRs and other safety technologies.

“With the EOBR mandate we’re having a healthy debate in our membership, but we’re not there yet,” says Osiecki. “We’ll probably see a targeted mandate for those who are non-compliant by the end of the year.”

As for active safety technologies like roll stability and lane departure warning systems, Osiecki is optimistic a policy will be developed in the near future.

But it’s not just safety the ATA would like to improve, but public perception. According to Osiecki, trucking’s image shapes public perception and public perception shapes public policy and the ATA is in the business to shape public policy.

“We have to find a way to close that loop and change the public’s perception on trucking,” he adds.