ATLANTA, March 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- While leading colleges and universities are vying for basketball championship honors during what is traditionally called March Madness, the highway safety advocacy group, Road Safe America, laments that without speed limiters and automatic electronic braking technology being used on all of our biggest trucks, March is just another month of unnecessary roadway deaths and injuries in America.
“March is a month of competitive celebrations on college basketball courts across the U.S., and that’s wonderful,” comments Steve Owings, Co-Founder of Road Safe America. “But it is a sad fact that the madness on our nation’s highways continues in March and every other month, when we have on average more than 1,000 big-rig crashes each day, resulting in more than 90 deaths per week and over 10,000 injuries each month, many of which could have easily been avoided.”
Road Safe America is an impartial, fact-based, advocacy organization focused on a win-win for the motoring public and professional truck drivers. The win-win? Safer highways for everyone.
Road Safe America calls attention to the results of a national survey showing, not surprisingly, that voters across the United States overwhelmingly support the required use of two safety technologies in large trucks: speed limiters and automatic emergency braking.
“Required use of speed limiters and automatic emergency braking technology on heavy big-rigs definitely would make our highways safer for everyone, including truck drivers,” Owings says. “What’s at stake? Your future and the future of those you love.”
While the cost in lives and injuries is a shameful national tragedy, bleeding our economy of $75 billion in truck crash-related costs year after year is inexcusable and fiscally unbearable. Road Safe America is promoting common sense changes to reduce truck crashes, congestion, needless injuries and deaths and staggering financial losses for taxpayers and trucking-industry stakeholders.
“Everyone needs to be aware that a big rig can’t stop or maneuver as quickly or easily as their car, and that it could take more than the length of two football fields for a truck traveling 65 mph to completely stop, so always try to give them lots of room. Because most of the time, the occupants of the passenger vehicle are the ones who get injured or killed when they collide with a big-rig,” said Owings.
ABOUT ROAD SAFE AMERICA
Road Safe America is dedicated to reducing the injuries and deaths resulting from collisions between tractor-trailer trucks and passenger vehicles. We are supported by private donations and have no financial ties to any part of the transportation industry. We are not anti-truck or anti-trucker. We are pro-safety. Steve Owings and his wife, Susan, founded Road Safe America in 2003 after their son, Cullum, was killed when his car – stopped in an interstate traffic jam – was crushed from behind by a speeding tractor trailer going well above the posted speed limit on cruise control. Since that tragic event, Steve and Susan, through Road Safe America, have worked to make our highways safer for all travelers.
Media Contact:
Andrew Bowen, APR
404-822-3309
ab@clearviewcom.com