WASHINGTON — Independent truckers, big carriers, and Joe Public have given U.S. trucking officials a lot to think about when it comes to the controversial issue of mandatory speed limiters on trucks.

To date, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — both DOT agencies — have received nearly 3,800 comments to a petition submitted by the American Trucking Associations requesting a federal mandate to cap truck engine speeds at 68 mph.

TodaysTrucking.com glanced over hundreds of the responses in the docket. Predictably, safety advocates and ATA member fleets champion the plan, while more than a few independent truckers and drivers passionately oppose such a rule. The majority of the comments, however, were from anonymous respondents — a large proportion, it seems, from the general public.

“I strongly support the use of speed limiting governors on commercial trucks. I know of an entire family that was killed in an accident with a truck,” said one observer.

In its comments, OOIDA questioned whether the DOT has the
authority to regulate truck speed limits on state highways

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — a long-time critic of the plan both in the U.S. and in Canada, where the idea originated — repeated past public comments that speed limitation will have little effect on excessive speed, but will have a net negative impact on highway safety.

It cites several studies, including a 1991 NHTSA report titled “Commercial Motor Vehicle Speed Control Devices,” which found that because speed contributed to relatively few truck accidents, the “incremental benefits of mandatory speed limitation in terms of either crash reduction or lives saved is questionable.”

A University of Arkansas study, says OOIDA, further shows that a variance of vehicle speeds in the traffic flow increases the risks of accidents because “vehicle interaction becomes less predictable and driving becomes more difficult.” Also, the same study found that trucks traveling at lower speeds tend to cluster together, creating bottlenecks on the road, the owner-op group adds.

OOIDA also questions whether either FMCSA or NHTSA has the authority to create a rule that would effectively set speed limits on state highways, since in 1995, Congress returned the authority to regulate highway speed to individual states.

The last comment in the docket so far belonged to another detractor: Chad Dornsife, executive director of Best Highway Safety Practices Institute, a newly formed non-profit organization based in Portland. “On many classifications of highways (speed limiters) would make driving significantly less safe for trucks and motorists alike. It would cause significant reductions in the capacity of multi-lane roadways.”

One of many officials representing large ATA fleets, Greer Woodruff, senior VP of safety at J.B. Hunt, said he believes that consideration could be given to changes in speed enforcement strategies if class 7 and 8 trucks were equipped with speed governors. “Speed enforcement could shift to focus attention on other safety issues such as unsafe automobile operations around trucks and increased enforcement of speeding and speed too fast for conditions on local and collector roads,” he said.

He also dismissed the primary argument against governors that increased variances in traffic speeds between cars and trucks will create a greater safety problem.

“While variations in traffic speeds may have some safety implications … some will argue that cars will be more likely to rear-end a tractor trailer traveling at a speed slower than the flow of traffic — J.B. Hunt believes an 80,000-pound tractor trailer rear-ending an automobile poses a much more serious safety risk than a car rear-ending a truck.”