The head of the American Trucking Assns. has challenged top federal and state motor vehicle safety officials to support his call for a nationwide crackdown on speeding cars and trucks.

"Speeding is, by everyone's account, one of the most prevalent contributing factors in traffic crashes on our nation's highways," said William Canary, ATA President and CEO. "Knowing this, why wouldn't we want to slow everyone down on our highways? It's simple: Safe speeds save lives."
In keynote remarks to the International Truck and Bus Safety Symposium at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville Wednesday, Canary said that in nearly 30 percent of all fatal crashes in 2000, drivers were either exceeding posted speed limits or driving too fast for conditions. The speed-related crashes, according to federal highway safety reports, claimed over 12,000 lives. "This human cost should be unacceptable to all of us," he concluded.
Canary called for increased funding and better targeting of federal safety programs, including the Highway Safety Grant program of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While the current NHTSA "Section 402" program does an important job of encouraging occupant protection devices and reducing impaired driving, he said, "the trucking industry is concerned that strong, visible speed enforcement for cars and trucks may not be getting the focus and attention it deserves by NHTSA."
Additionally, said Canary, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, though a generally successful truck and bus safety inspection program, is not putting enough emphasis on traffic safety efforts, particularly strong speed enforcement.
"More must be done to address the toll exacted by speeding drivers," added ATA Chairman David G. McCorkle of McCorkle Truck Line, Okla. In joining the challenge to federal and state motor vehicles officials to increase their enforcement of traffic laws, McCorkle also called for more attention to drivers following too closely, the most often cited unsafe driving act according to federal statistics
In a March 28 letter to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Canary and McCorkle made many of the same points and asked the agencies' administrators to "join ATA in calling for and leading the effort to increase visible traffic enforcement efforts aimed at reducing the speed of all drivers on our nation's highways."