Joint Statement on Passage “INVEST in America Act”
Joint Statement on Passage “INVEST in America Act”
The INVEST Act Includes a Wide Array of Truck Safety Improvements
The U.S. House of Representative passed the INVEST Act (H.R. 3684), a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization bill that includes the most substantial improvements for truck safety in the past 40 years. Our truck safety advocacy groups thank Chairman Peter DeFazio and Chairwoman Eleanor Holmes Norton for leading this monumental effort. We are also grateful for the commitment and compassion of Representatives Hank Johnson, Chuy Garcia, Steve Cohen, and Lucy McBath for championing policies supported by our groups and our networks of volunteers, families of victims, and truck crash survivors throughout the country.
The INVEST Act includes these much-needed policies that will reduce truck crashes, prevent injuries, and save lives:
Updating the minimum insurance for large trucks from $750,000 to $2,000,000 and indexing to inflation. (Sec. 4408)
Requiring automatic emergency braking for truck-tractors and a study to initiate rulemaking on AEB in all large trucks. (Sec. 4404)
Improving rear underride guards and a study to learn more about the safety benefits of side underride guards. (Sec. 4405)
Restoring the public’s access to compliance, safety, accountability (CSA) data and issuing a safety fitness determination rule will improve accountability throughout the supply chain. (Sec. 4202)
Preventing further delays for the entry-level driver training rule. (Sec. 4303)
Studying driver detention time. (Sec. 4304)
Creating a task force on truck leasing. (Sec. 4305)
Initiating a rulemaking for screening for obstructive sleep apnea. (Sec. 4308)
Authorizing funds for the creation and maintenance of parking for truck drivers. (Sec. 1308)
“The INVEST in America Act will do more to improve truck safety than any other bill has over the past four decades. In particular, the Institute for Safer Trucking is proud to have brought together a diverse and growing coalition in support of Representative Hank Johnson’s automatic emergency braking language, which was ultimately included in the INVEST Act. Despite efforts by some to misinform the public about this major safety advancement, the facts prevailed.” said Harry Adler, Principal at the Institute for Safer Trucking. “We also welcome the long overdue update to the rear underride guard standard, which was set back in the 1990s. We urge policymakers to continue working to eliminate the threat of underride crashes, which must also address side underride crashes and front override crashes.”
“The need to increase minimum insurance requirements per truck crash becomes greater and greater every day. With the costs of hospital stays, surgeries, and rehabs all going up at a faster rate than inflation, the purchasing power of the $750,000 minimum that Congress set in 1980 is severely inadequate in 2021,” said Kate Brown, a board member for the Institute for Safer Trucking whose son, Graham, was severely injured in a truck crash with a company that had the minimum insurance. “IST is proud to support the long-overdue update to minimum insurance requirements that is included in the INVEST Act. We hope the Senate adds identical language to their Infrastructure bill and joins this effort to help keep unsafe companies off our roads and protect families and survivors from the financial harm that can follow a crash with a motor carrier that maintains the minimum required under current law.”
“The Dave Fons Memorial Fund for the Advocacy of Truck Safety is excited about the inclusion of several of these important provisions that will make our roads safer. Requiring automatic emergency braking in truck-tractors within one year of the bill’s enactment will save lives and prevent the kinds of truck crashes that killed my father,” said Courtney Sprague, a board member at the Michigan-based non-profit named for her father, Dave, who was tragically killed in a large truck crash. “Additionally, other provisions like devoting more funding to safe truck parking facilities and initiating rulemaking to screen truck drivers for obstructive sleep apnea will reduce preventable truck crashes caused by fatigue.”
“Road Safe America is pleased that language to increase the minimum insurance and require the use of AEB in large trucks, two major priorities of our organization, was included in the House INVEST Act. Unfortunately, we are disappointed the INVEST Act did not include the text of the bipartisan bill named after my deceased son, Cullum, which would have required large trucks to set their already existing speed limiters to a maximum of 70mph while encouraging broad deployment in the existing big-rig fleet of automatic emergency braking,” said Steve Owings, the co-founder and president of Road Safe America. “While our organization anticipated opposition to this critical safety measure from certain segments of the trucking industry, I was devastated that it has not been aggressively supported by all safety advocacy groups. The silence from some of these groups on the need to include a requirement to set speed limiters on our largest trucks has been deafening. We remain hopeful the Senate’s infrastructure bill will include this language that is strongly supported by leading truck safety groups as well major trucking industry organizations.”
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