This safe-driving awareness and outreach initiative endeavors to improve the driving behaviors of those operating passenger and commercial vehicles via education, traffic enforcement and interactions with law enforcement.
In conjunction with law enforcement in Canada, Mexico and the U.S., the CVSA seeks to increase road safety by identifying drivers engaging in risky behaviors and issuing citations or warnings to discourage such behaviors.
“Data shows that traffic stops and interactions with law enforcement help reduce problematic driving behaviors,” according to the CVSA webpage. “By making contact with drivers during Operation Safe Driver Week, law enforcement personnel aim to make our roadways safer by targeting high-risk driving behaviors.”
The high-risk driving behavior that will be the focus of OSD week this year is speeding.
Why It Matters
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), data shows that “in 2020, speeding was a factor in 29% of motor vehicle crash deaths. Speeding has been a factor in more than a quarter of crash deaths over the past decade.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) annual traffic crash report revealed that 38,824 lives were lost to traffic crashes nationwide in 2020 – the most fatalities since 2007. And while we saw an overall decline in the number of crashes and traffic injuries, fatal crashes were up 6.8%.
“The rising fatalities on our roadways are a national crisis; we cannot and must not accept these deaths as inevitable,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Initiatives like OSD week are geared toward educating drivers on safety concerns, cracking down on risky driving behaviors, and preventing unnecessary driving-related accidents, injuries and deaths to give drivers enhanced peace of mind.
FMCSA will also be renaming the Cargo-Related BASIC to the Hazardous Materials (HM) BASIC, which will better identify HM-related safety problems and change how HAZMAT carriers are classified to allow for increased intervention scrutiny. Now HAZMAT violations will be placed in the HAZMAT BASIC, which will better identify HAZMAT-related safety problems and change how HAZMAT carriers are classified to allow for increased intervention scrutiny. The HAZMAT BASIC will include items such as placarding and paperwork violations.