Texas motorists and truck drivers may be interested to learn that the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Operation Safe Driver Week is scheduled to take place between July 15 and July 21. During this week, law enforcement agencies around the country will be taking part in watching the nation’s roads in order to spot commercial drivers and drivers of passenger vehicles using unsafe driving practices.
According to a study from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, driver behavior was a critical factor in about 93 percent of crashes involving passenger vehicles and 88 percent of crashes involving large trucks during the period reviewed. As such, the Operation Safe Driver Program will focus on spotting a variety of dangerous driving behaviors, which includes improper lane changes, distracted driving, speeding, following other vehicles too closely and failing to wear a seat belt.
During the 2017 Operation Safe Driving Week, there were about 39,000 citations handed out to drivers of commercial vehicles alone. The number of moving violations topped out the list. This was followed by speeding as the second most common type of citation. Failing to use a seat belt came in third, failing to obey traffic devices came in fourth, while using a smartphone while driving rounded out the top five.
There are thousands of trucking accidents every single year that result in injuries to occupants of other vehicles. Many of these truck accidents are caused by dangerous or careless driving behaviors like speeding, driving under the influence and being distracted. People who have been harmed in such a collision that was caused by truck driver negligence might want to have a lawyer’s assistance when seeking compensation for their losses.
