Drivers in Virginia may be enjoying safer roads this year than last, but data collected by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliances yielded mixed results. A week-long campaign, dubbed Operation Safe Driver, resulted in commercial and passenger vehicles being pulled over across the United States and Canada, with the drivers being issued citations or warnings.
The violations included speeding, failure to obey a traffic signal or sign, inattentive driving, use of a cellphone behind the wheel, and state and local moving violations. Statistics showed that commercial vehicles had approximately 2,600 fewer violations in 2016 compared to 2015. Over the same time period, personal vehicle violations went up by more than 2,200.
The goal of the program has been to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities occurring as a result of accidents involving commercial vehicles. The most prominent, risky behaviors of commercial drivers were state and local moving violations and speeding. Drivers of passenger vehicles were given the most traffic violations for the same categories. Data is used by many supporting organizations to aid development of enforcement and education strategies in the future.
Semi truck accidents can result in catastrophic injuries to occupants of other vehicles that are involved in these collisions. One reason that these incidents are so dangerous are the sheer size and weight of big rigs compared to automobiles. When such an accident is caused by a truck driver who was speeding, distracted by a cellphone, impaired or otherwise negligent in some other fashion, a personal injury attorney might assist an injured victim in attempting to obtain compensation for the losses that have been sustained.