Every single day the trucking industry hauls 51 million tons of freight, valued at nearly $52 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). In order to keep that freight, as well as the drivers and the public, safe, the transportation and trucking industry has taken strides to enhance and implement safety technologies on commercial vehicles.
To ensure further adoption and acceptance, an assessment of current safety technologies and possible new technologies, is imperative. To place further emphasis on this, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced the launch of its “Tech-Celerate Now” program. Some of this program’s key objectives include exploring the understanding and adoption of current advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) technologies in addition to education and assessment of future ADAS technologies.
Although industry research has provided some insight into the value of advanced safety technologies, through the ability to reduce the severity of crashes – if not prevent crashes altogether – there is still much work to be done.
Categorizing these safety technologies into four separate categories is the best way to maintain focus on a holistic approach to safety, these four categories are: braking, steering, warning, and monitoring systems. Braking safety systems such as automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control in addition to warning systems like lane departure, forward collision and blind spot detection are available for spec on vehicles now. Up-and-coming technologies in the steering category, such as lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control as well as monitoring systems like camera-based mirrors will be on late model vehicles in the near future.
The program aims to establish a benchmark on current safety technology adoption rates among fleets, followed by a campaign promoting technologies that will provide a noticeable return on investment. To learn more about how technology continues to change the transportation and trucking industry, contact us to get in touch with one of our in-house logistics experts.
Written by:
Tim Griffin
Director of Marketing & Media, C.L. Services Transport
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