July 23, 2015
The Honorable Cory Booker
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Booker:
We would like to thank you for your ongoing leadership on improving safety on our nation’s roads and for including key safety provisions in the Postal Innovations Act. Requiring the United States Postal Service (USPS) to use crash avoidance technologies will save lives and cut costs.
Annually about 4,000 people are killed in truck crashes and another 100,000 are injured. That is a 17 percent increase in fatalities from 2009-2013, and it is a 28 percent increase in injuries during the same time period. Those statistics are unacceptable.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) concluded that, based on data from 2003 through 2008, large trucks are the striking vehicle in approximately 32,000 rear-end crashes resulting in 300 fatalities and over 15,000 injuries annually. By installing crash avoidance technologies in the USPS fleet, the number of these crashes will go down.
NHTSA also estimates that current generation forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems, a specific type of collision avoidance technology, can prevent more than 2,500 crashes each year (16 percent) and that future generation systems could prevent more than 6,300 crashes annually (40 percent). This is just one example of how these types of technologies can greatly reduce future crashes and save lives. By USPS using these technologies, it can serve as a model for other organizations and companies on how to leverage proven technology to save lives and reduce preventable injuries, while improving their bottom line.
The Truck Safety Coalition, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH), and Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT) support the inclusion of crash avoidance technologies in this bill. We are thankful for your continuing efforts to make our roads safer.
Sincerely,
John Lannen
Executive Director, Truck Safety Coalition
Vice Chair, Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC)
Jennifer Tierney
Kernersville, NC
Board Member, CRASH
Member, MCSAC
Daughter of James Mooney
Killed in a truck crash 9/20/83