Letter to the Editor

More big rig enforcement needed

     Editor’s note: The author of this letter attached a newspaper clipping of an article about a four-vehicle crash on Highway 65 between Chapin and Sheffield that occurred Aug. 27. Also included was a spreadsheet with vehicle crash statistics in Iowa. In 2010, 16.5 percent of fatal crashes involved a large freight truck.

Letter to the Editor:

     It’s too easy to be “legal, ran over and dead” on our highways nowadays. Most people have been so duped into believing they’re safe if they just wear a seat belt, even if they get ran over by an 80,000-pound big rig with drivers speeding or asleep, or texting, or on the phone.

     Seat belt Iowa always makes the dirty top five states in the U.S. for having an above average of its fatal crashes where large trucks are involved. You won’t get that truth and news through the professional regular news system. Check www.nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Puds.811158.Pdf and click “Large truck involvement in fatal crashes by state.”

     No one is enforcing the speed limit on big rigs except the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement (CVE) personnel, and they’re so few and far between they’re almost non-existant. The state patrol may be doing a little, but they’re diverted into “nanny laws” like seat belts, tobacco compliance and possession laws.

     Now there’s an attempt (behind closed doors) to put the CVE personnel into the state patrol. This is probably being pushed up by Big Money/Big Business to get rid of what little speed enforcement there still is on big rigs.

     There has not been a proper increase in enforcement on large trucks to keep up with the exploding numbers of them and the increased miles they drive.

     At the federal level, some common sense safety organizations such as www.roadsafeamerica.org, www.trucksafety.org and www.crashprevention.org tried to get lawmakers to get better laws and enforcement, especially on the speed of large trucks, but common sense proposals are usually shot down by the big lobbyists from Big Money/Big Business trucking interests that don’t want any speed limits or enforcement on their activities.

Herman Lenz

20832 Y Ave.

Sumner