I recently attended a webinar initiated by the FMCSA in regards to making changes on the data used to grade carriers in the CSA basic scores. Multiple times during this 3 hour webinar the State of Indiana was referenced by Safety Professionals and Carrier owners for the majority of their driver moving violations. These Professionals and owners commented that 1/3 or better of their driver moving violations came from Indiana and were upset that their drivers were being ticketed for going 2-3 miles over the posted speed.
As a Safety Professional myself, I am all about keeping the roads safe but is giving our truckers a ticket actually keeping Indiana roads safer?
I’m going to give you my thoughts on this one. Almost a year ago I invited an officer (for his protection we will call him Fryhopper) from the Indiana State Police Commercial Vehicle Division to speak at one of my safety meetings. In one of our conversations prior to the meeting I commented to officer Fryhopper that over 80% of our driver moving violations were in Indiana and asked officer Fryhopper if he felt that was because Indiana has more unsafe drivers. The first red flag for me was when the officer told me he did not like to use statistics when talking then he said that Indiana chose to use a majority of their Federal funding to beef up their Police force and issue more traffic violations. When asked why, officer Fryhopper replied “to cut down on accidents”. Good answer right.?
Continued in part 2…..