Road Safe America - Comment

Road Safe America strongly supports Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 136 issued by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. The use of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) technology on heavy commercial vehicles is a logical and prudent step towards saving lives on American highways. Safety advocates know that good intentions, including special training for drivers, are not sufficient to assure good safety practices on our roads. Every professional driver knows the risk to himself and the general public when a heavy vehicle is found suddenly out-of-control due to his error, passenger car error or road conditions. At the current rate of fleet turnover it will unfortunately take more than twenty years for the American heavy commercial vehicle fleet to be using this safety technology, even when it becomes mandated for new equipment. RSA strongly recommends to all commercial carriers that they consider not only buying new equipment that provide ESC technology, but retrofitting their existing trailers with Roll-Over Stability Control (RSC), an affordable upgrade almost as effective as ESC for existing vehicles. The 40 to 60 lives expected to be saved by this ESC mandated as written today, could grow rapidly with retro-fitting of heavy commercial trailers with RSC equipment.