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The email response from CRASH after suggesting "Dear John & Jane Q. Public" letter be added to CRASH'S site....
Dated: July 17, 2000 (one day later)
Dear Rachelle:
Thanks for sending CRASH a copy of "Dear John & Jane Q. Public." It is quite informative and we are interested in adding it to the Truck Safety Advocates Speak Out! section of our web site -- www.trucksafety.org. However, upon investigating your site we came upon this description of our organization:
"CRASH This is a group that doesn't like truck drivers much… Involved in Hours of Service reform, CRASH is working very hard to try to see drivers get less hours to drive. Keep an eye on what they're up to...(it's never good for the driver) Funded by the railroads!" (Note: this had been my description on the favorite links page. Read on and you'll see I changed it.)
We feel you are truly misinformed. CRASH is not against trucks or truck drivers. We are for truck safety. We don't believe that safety and trucking are mutually exclusive, and we are working to make trucking operations in the U.S. as safe as possible. Too often the industry places productivity concerns ahead of safety issues. Our goal is to make sure that safety is always the top priority of legislators, regulatory bodies and trucking interests. To that end, we have spent time working on reducing the widespread incidence of truck driver fatigue, freezing the size and weight of trucks, and improving conspicuity and rear underride guards on trailers. We consider much of what we do to be pro-driver, such as working to improve hours-of-service regulations and compensation and promoting education of driver rights. We have many truck drivers who are a part of CRASH and who work with other motorists to improve truck safety.
We do not feel like every crash is the truck driver's fault. We feel almost every truck driver is a good person who is simply doing the best job he or she can in the safest way possible. Our focus as an organization is to make trucks and truck drivers as safe as we can -- this means we often focus on problems in the industry or on issues that can be improved. This sometimes make it look like we only focus on the negatives. The truth is that all motorists, including truck drivers, are victims of a system that consistently places profits and productivity ahead of public safety. Not only do we acknowledge the need for more education of all drivers on how to share the road but we are attempting to help four-wheelers develop better drive to survive skills by producing a video for use in automobile driver education programs nationwide. A number of over the road veterans are assisting us.
Form our work with truck drivers we know they are pushed to exceed hours-of-service limits, to drive oversized or overweight loads, to drive too fast to meet their schedule, etc. Many drivers who are trying to keep it as safe and legal as possible are literally threatened with being fired if they fail to push beyond the limits of the law. Even in some cases where the truck driver is at fault, we try to consider what industry issues are involved rather than simply "blame the driver."
Please take the time to carefully read the CRASH mission statement, legislative agenda and list of accomplishments on our website www.trucksafety.org. If you do this you will be going beyond just what you read in the trucking publications or hear at the truck stops. You will learn that this organization has fought for years to improve the conditions under which truck drivers are forced to operate.
Safety is everyone's responsibility, and we feel that car drivers as well as truck drivers should be considerate and well-educated about how to use the highways safely. However, CRASH is exclusively a truck safety organization. Like many organizations, we focus on a specific issue and dedicate all of our time to efforts related to this issue. CRASH is the only national grassroots organization dedicated to improving truck safety, and therefore we do not focus specifically on car safety issues. For example, MADD does an excellent job educating and activating on the issue of DUI. However they are not concerned with truck safety issues. That is our concern.
Finally, this organization is made up of thousands of individuals, many of whom have suffered death and injury in their families due to truck crashes. This includes many families of truck drivers. These people have suffered the ultimate sacrifice. They now desire to change the system so it doesn't happen to others. They decide the agenda of the organization and they provide 95% of the funding that keeps this organization visible and vocal. The other 5% comes from small charitable foundations and small trucking companies. (Not one penny of support comes from the railroads!) We receive no government or major corporate funding. Our entire budget is less than half the salary of the ATA president. (Where does your funding come from?) What we lack in funding we make up for with tens of thousands of volunteer hours contributed by people who are passionate about making the roads safer for all who use them including truck drivers. The power behind CRASH is the power of public opinion. We hope this information helps you better understand who we are and what we do.
Please let us know if you decide to change the description in your links section to reflect the truth about CRASH. Maybe then we'll be able to run your "Dear John and Jane Q. Public" letter and give people another link to your helpful site.
Regards, CRASH Staff |
