CVSA: Operation Safe Driver Week begins
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) Operation Safe Driver Week began on Sunday and runs from July 9-July 15, 2023. Operation Safe Driver Week is a weeklong driver safety initiative aimed at reducing unsafe driver behaviors through educational and traffic-enforcement strategies. The focus for 2023 is on speeding, a leading factor in traffic deaths and injuries.
The Operation Safe Driver program:
- Targets unsafe driving behaviors by passenger vehicle drivers and commercial drivers.
- Educates youth about safely sharing the roads with large trucks and buses.
- Offers commercial driver educational and awareness programs to the motor carrier population.
- Increases awareness to the general motoring public about safe operations around commercial motor vehicles.
- Aims to improve commercial motor driver regulatory compliance.
- Conducts passenger vehicle and commercial motor vehicle traffic enforcement initiatives.
CVSA – in partnership with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), state, provincial and local law enforcement, and industry – launched the Operation Safe Driver campaign in 2007 to reduce the number of deaths and injuries resulting from crashes involving large trucks, buses and cars.
Why Target Driver Behaviors?
This program focuses specifically on drivers because drivers’ actions – whether it’s something a driver did, like speeding, or something they didn’t do, such as not paying attention to the driving task – are responsible for most crashes. In fact, drivers’ actions contribute to a staggering 94% of all traffic crashes.
Furthermore, last year, roadway fatalities increased 24% over the previous 12-month period, despite miles driven dropping 13%. With the decrease in the number of vehicles on our roadways last year due to the pandemic, we expected a decrease roadway fatalities; however, not only did the rate of roadway deaths increase, that increase is the highest estimated year-over-year jump the National Safety Council has calculated in 96 years. This is, simply put, unacceptable. And the members of CVSA will do everything they can to reverse that alarming trend. Operation Safe Driver Week is part of that commitment.
For more information and resources, visit www.cvsa.org/programs/operation-safe-driver/.
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