Mexican Trucks on U.S. Highways Raise Truck Safety Questions
There are many unresolved safety questions as Mexican long-haul trucks prepare to make their appearance on American roads.

December 01, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Trying to maintain truck safety is a constant challenge. Unrelenting financial pressures frequently put fatigued truckers on the road. Many experienced drivers are leaving the business, putting 80,000 rigs in the hands of novices.

Those big rigs do enormous damages when crashes occur. Truck accident attorneys in Ohio and across the country know just how devastating those truck wrecks can be. In 2009, 3,380 people were killed in large truck accidents and 74,000 people were injured.

To be sure, there are initiatives underway seeking to bring down those terrible figures. Electronic onboard recorders are supposed to cut down on accidents caused by driver fatigue by getting rid of easily-to-falsify paper logbooks in favor of electronic records.

Federal regulators are also at work on changes to hours-of-service regulations for truckers and on ensuring better inspections of safety records for both drivers and trucking companies.

But are federal safety agencies really prepared to handle the task of regulating Mexican trucks? The question is a timely one because, 17 years after the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement treaty, Mexican long-haul trucks are preparing to make their appearance on American roads.

DOT Program

The federal Department of Transportation has set up a cross-border trucking pilot program whereby Mexican trucks carry freight on U.S. roads. The program is an 18-month pilot that allows Mexican carriers to be licensed to operate in the U.S.

Mexican trucks are, in theory, supposed to be held to the same safety and pollution standards as their U.S. counterparts. Whether this will happen in practice is very much an open question.

There was a previous pilot program between 2007 and 2009. When Congress cut off funding for it, a Mexican trucking group known as Canacar brought suit under NAFTA to again open the U.S. border. Mexico also retaliated against the U.S. with various offer tariffs.

Canacar is one of only a few Mexican companies that have applied for admission into the program so far. Others are expected to follow, however, once the details of the process become more established.

Safety Advocates' Concerns

Safety advocates in the U.S. want to make sure that Mexican trucks with questionable safety records don't slip through the bureaucratic cracks.

For example, the nonprofit watchdog group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is concerned about an application by a Mexican company based in Tijuana called Grupo Behr de Baja California de CV. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association also has concerns about that company's safety record.

Such concerns are apt to multiply if more and more Mexican trucking companies enter the American market.

Unresolved Truck Safety Issues

Proponents of the pilot program assert that Mexican trucks and drivers will be able to meet U.S. safety standards. But there are a host of potential issues. These include such things as different work rules for drivers in the two countries and different types of standard equipment on the trucks themselves.

Then there is the sensitive matter of the language barrier. No one wants to bash hard-working Mexican truck drivers who are trying hard to do their jobs. But how safe is it to send such drivers into the interior of America, where they don't know the traffic laws? They may not even know the language the road signs are written in.

Because of these safety concerns, Congress is considering a bill to require a review of the cross-border truck program in three years. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California is sponsoring the bill.

Meanwhile, under the NAFTA agreement, American truckers are also eligible to operate in Mexico. It seems unlikely, however, that many will do so. After all, truck drivers in Mexico make only a fraction of what drivers make in the U.S.

Moreover, the U.S. already has a shortage of experienced drivers. No matter what NAFTA allows, importing cadres of Mexican drivers to make up for that shortage may not be the way to improve truck safety.

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