Arkansas Trucking Association

The Last Word

Delivering the Good News of Safety

By David O’Neal

You’ve read a lot about safety in the preceding pages. You’ve seen coverage of the trucking championships, both in Arkansas and at the national level – possibly the best and most tangible illustration of highway safety, given the 156 drivers who competed in Arkansas, all at least one year accident free and many with decades of blemish-free driving. Add to that the 430+ drivers from all 50 states who competed at the NTDC in Indianapolis. You read a feature on Arkansas Highway Police Major Jay Thompson – a man who has devoted his career to keeping our highways safe.

Those things are all about the good news of safety! A celebration of safety! Recognition of a safety-focused career!

Yet when I started writing this, I was headed down a path well-trod directives by safety professionals everywhere: Don’t drive distracted. Never drive impaired. How can you make safety more important to your organization? Etc. Ad nauseum.

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Up Front- The Coin Toss

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Finally! It’s almost over. And I can hardly contain my excitement. Like so many of you, with the end in sight, I found myself asking, “Is it over yet?”

Oh wait, did you think I was referring to the never-ending presidential election campaign?

I’m talking about something much more pleasant... football.

After 7 months without anything more than spring football, media days and those surely meaningless preseason polls, the anticipation is over.

I forgive you for thinking I was writing about the presidential campaign though. I feel your pain. I suspect—whether right, left or somewhere in between—it is wearing on us all.

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The Last Word

Undecided Voters may be Running out the Clock

By Bill Vickery

So now what? Have you decided? Has this election “grabbed” you yet?

If there’s anything certain about this presidential election, it’s that uncertainty remains its central theme.

The narrative is clear. This is an election unlike any other. But with only about three weeks left before ballots are cast, undecided voters must make up their minds. The answers to several important questions may finally convince them to make a choice. Or the tabloid style campaigning (and let’s not be hypocritical here, both sides—even us simple voters—are full throttle into this type of campaigning…even if it sometimes makes us feel like we’re slowing down to look at a wreck on the side of the road) may drive many Americans to just skip voting in the presidential election.

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Up Front- How We Say It

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

We Americans love our freedom. An inalienable right, it is baked into our national identity. We are emotionally attached to making our own decisions, being our own bosses, ruling our own domains. Even when it’s not in our best interest, we cling to freedoms like eating too much or driving too fast.

So it should come as no surprise that many in the trucking industry are squirming after reading the recent proposal from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to equip heavy-duty vehicles with devices that limit their speeds on U.S. roadways and require those devices be set to a maximum speed.

Safety is the cornerstone that allows our industry to prosper. Unsafe behaviors or policies raise the risks on the roads that our families travel, they cost our industry time and money, and they endanger our most scarce, costly and valuable resource—our employees. So the notion that the trucking industry is anything other than an advocate for safe driving and roadways is baseless.

However, that notion is one we must be constantly vigilant against when opposing regulations that make us uncomfortable. Anti-trucking groups masquerading as safety advocates are always looking for ways to paint our legislative and regulatory agenda as anything but beneficial for public safety.

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