Incentives for safety investment
“It is about encouraging investment in safety through the purchase and installation of technologies on trucks and buses that have been tested and proven to work.” –Stephen F. Campbell, executive director, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance
It’s quite ironic that I’m again writing about yet another Congressional legislative attempt to provide tax credits to trucking fleets for investing in safety systems.
Despite the ongoing ballyhoo over improving truck safety, reducing truck-car crashes and fatalities, despite all the rhetoric and diatribes, it’s proved impossible to actually get legislation passed that would directly address the truck safety issue head on.
The reintroduction of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Advanced Safety Technology Tax Act of 2009 (H.R. 2024) amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a credit against income tax to help accelerate the adoption of advanced safety systems not just for commercial vehicles, but for school and transit buses.
The systems covered in this bill – reintroduced by Representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Geoff Davis (R-KY), backed by the 10 original sponsors of this legislation last year – include brake stroke monitoring systems, vehicle stability systems, lane departure warning systems, plus collision warning systems.
The legislation encompasses both the original equipment (OE) and aftermarket installation of these safety systems and also:
• Creates a tax credit for fleet owners valued at 50 percent of the retail cost of the system with a maximum of $1,500 per technology;
• Allows fleets to purchase multiple technologies, but limit the total amount of credit permissible to $3,500 per vehicle; and,
• Allows the overall tax credit for each truck owner or trucking company of up to $350,000 per year for all covered technology purchases.
“It is about encouraging investment in safety through the purchase and installation of technologies on trucks and buses that have been tested and proven to work,” says Stephen F. Campbell, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), which has actively supported this tax credit effort. “It will reduce the deaths occurring from the most prevalent truck and bus crash types on our highways, which have been hovering around 5,000 per year for the last decade.”
This effort is really a no brainer – and its received support from both the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the past, with NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker specifically pointing out in testimony before Congress last eyar that the quickest way to promote widespread use of motor vehicle safety technologies was through this tax incentive approach.
Will it work this time? That’s the big unanswerable, isn’t it? But it would be a shame to see such an effort fall by the wayside again – an effort that could dramatically change the safety picture for commercial vehicles and buses alike on our highways in a very short amount of time.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Okay, by mandating this we have just built in the cost of a new Pete $15-20k. Yes, they give you a rebate of 10-15%….that sure helps. You know how I feel about taking responsibility and control from the operator. They have sooo much time to do other things, talk on the cell, eat dinner, read the newspaper or whatever. Except watch the road!! With the volume of traffic on the road you need 100% attention to what you are doing. These systems remind me of an old trucker joke….reaching back in the sleeper the driver says, “wake up Ralph, you ain’t never seen a wreck like we gonna have.”
April 30th, 2009 at 5:13 am
I gotta disagree with you here this time Steve. These technologies, used PROPERLY, give a professional driver the edge on these ever-crowded roads of ours. If a driver is checking his mirrors and a car cuts in front of him, the forward warning radar gives him precious seconds of reaction time. If a driver misjudges how tight a corner is, the stability control system can prevent an accident and teach him/her a valuable lesson in judging turns. I also don’t think that by putting these systems on trucks, drivers will just quit being professional en masse. That only happens if their employers and peers allow it to happen. That’s my take.
SK
May 5th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Okay, bad analogy, but every driver “knows” that having a load of cattle live or hangin’ that the corner will put him on the roof. Every driver “knows” that the car next to him is going to cut him off. If you put enough beeps and buzzers in the truck the driver is going to lose that instants advantage while his mind is registering which warning to heed.
I’m not involved in the testing of these products so I cannot be a true devils advocate. It just doesn’t look to me like the advantages are there.
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Trucks at Work: Sean Kilcarr comments on trends affecting the many different strata of the trucking industry -- light and medium duty fleets up through over-the-road truckload, less-than-truckload, and private fleet operationsAdvertisement
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