Images de page
PDF
ePub

ference about that. Their argument is that the government has for a long time ignored the proper or the best type of underride device. The fact is that the government has studied this at great length and we have all encouraged them to come out with a finding. And there are a couple of facts that are interesting. First of all, a 16inch underride is very dangerous, because it catches on every railroad track, it catches on bumps in the road, it catches on snow, it catches on all matter of problems. It is very, very dangerous.

The arguments by CRASH really don't hold a lot of water. They are very sad cases where they bring out somebody that has been injured and disfigured. But usually that is somebody that is driven into the back of a truck at 40 miles an hour. We don't generally back our trucks down the road trying to run into cars. There is no underride that is going to handle that sort of a problem.

Our concern was not with the debate, because we will use any legitimate underride system that works, but it is with the sensationalism and the way that it was handled. You know, as a fundraising device. And it angered me.

Mr. VALENTINE. What about speed? Did they advocate

Mr. DONOHUE. I don't know what their advocations are on speed. I know what ours are. I was one of the people who wanted to keep the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit. We are the people that advocated our companies putting governors on our trucks so they couldn't drive more than 57. So we have no problem with anybody advocating reduced speed.

Mr. VALENTINE. What about weight limitations? This thing you just mentioned, is this the only problem you have got with these folks?

Mr. DONOHUE. I think the problem I have with these folks is not based only on the substance of their arguments. It is based on the approach. It is based on the deception. It is based on a lack of integrity.

Mr. VALENTINE. Can you cite an example of a lack of integrity, another example? These are pretty serious charges.

Mr. DONOHUE. Yes, sir, they are.

Mr. VALENTINE. For a bunch of people that have the respect of a lot of people in and outside of Congress. Give me some examples. You have been pretty strong with these accusations.

Mr. DONOHUE. I think to cube up the numbers the way they were cubed up is doctoring the numbers. I understand that folks don't like anybody to challenge safety or consumer groups, self-proclaimed. But, you know, every now and then it is time to stop and say, What is behind this, and what are they really after, and what is really the substantive nature, and what is going to be the public good?

And I think it is fair to say for a long time we have been very measured and tried to be thoughtful in our response. But sometimes when you represent 7.5 million hard-working people, when you represent 200,000 companies that are out there trying to do a fair job every day, every now and then you get your Irish up a little bit, and my Irish is up.

Mr. VALENTINE. Besides getting your Irish up, can you give me examples what you are talking about? You made charges, one, two, three. What is it

Mr. DONOHUE. One is the numbers

Mr. VALENTINE. In what way? What is wrong with the numbers? Mr. DONOHUE. The numbers have been changed and cubed up to give an impression that it is different than the facts.

Mr. VALENTINE. How so? Decreased, increased? Are they fraudulent numbers?

Mr. DONOHUE. That is your word.

Mr. VALENTINE. Well, what is your word?

Mr. DONOHUE. My word is they are deceiving.

Mr. VALENTINE. In what way?

Mr. DONOHUE. In that they give a story that is different than the fact.

Mr. VALENTINE. Do you advocate triple trailers?

Mr. DONOHUE. I advocate triple trailers where they are used in a very safe and appropriate road system. I do not advocate the expansion of triple trailers to the total nation, because there are a lot of places where they don't make sense.

Mr. VALENTINE. How about four trailers?

Mr. DONOHUE. I have never seen that except in Australia.

Mr. VALENTINE. Well, what is your opinion about it? You say you want three. What about four?

Mr. DONOHUE. I have no interest in four trailers.

Mr. VALENTINE. Does this group oppose the double trailers? Is that one of the problems that you have with them?

Mr. DONOHUE. Well, there are a number of different types of double trailers. There are two pups, they call them, which is 28-foot trailers, and they don't oppose those. What they oppose are the trailers that are used in the far West. They are called-they are Double 48s. They use them in very few places in this country. Traditionally in places in the far-out West. I am not talking about California. I am talking in Utah and Wyoming and places like that. Mr. VALENTINE. I trust-Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your indulgence. I don't have any special interest in it one way or another. I do know-I believe in all my heart there is a place for the trucking industry. My God, most of what we have was brought by trucks. I think there is also a place for citizens to look over the shoulders of the industry. And I trust that you will stay here and listen to what these people will say in response to your questions. They have had to listen to you.

Mr. DONOHUE. I would like very much to do that. I am going to do a television show on worker's compensation but I will listen to the tape of it and I will have some people here.

Mr. VALENTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Joe, for your testimony.

The subcommittee will now hear from a panel consisting of Ms. Joan Claybrook, President, Public Citizen, testifying on behalf of Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, Washington, D.C., and Cochair for Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways.

Also, Dr. Gerald Donaldson, Senior Research Director, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Washington, D.C.

Mr. Chuck Hurley, Senior Vice President of Communications, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

And Mr. Darryl Wyland, Senior Vice President for Public and Government Relations, American Automobile Association.

TESTIMONY OF JOAN CLAYBROOK, PRESIDENT, PUBLIC CITIZEN, AND CO-CHAIR FOR CITIZENS FOR RELIABLE AND SAFE HIGHWAYS (CRASH); GERALD A. DONALDSON, PH.D., SENIOR RESEARCH DIRECTOR, ADVOCATES FOR HIGHWAY AND AUTO SAFETY; CHARLES A. HURLEY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS, INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY, ACCOMPANIED BY ELISA BRAVER, SENIOR RESEARCHER, TRUCK SAFETY ISSUES; AND DARRYL L. WYLAND, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLIC AND GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION

Ms. CLAYBROOK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today and correct the disingenuousness and misimpression of Mr. Donohue. Being called disingenuous by Mr. Donohue is like being called ugly by a frog.

I would like to first of all make several statements about CRASH and the people who support our position.

First, it is an organization that has 30,000 activists nationwide. who work with us. We have a 17-member board which includes Robert Vagley, President of the American Insurance Association; John S. Hassel, the former administrator of the Federal Highway Administration; and James Arena, the Chair of the National Association of Governor's Highway Safety Representatives. And I will submit for the record a list of the other board members.

We also have a number of supporters-and the list is being held up for you now-a large number of organizations of great repute that support the position that we take on the issue of larger and heavier trucks. And this is quite a substantial list of organizations. Mr. VALENTINE. Mr. Chairman, excuse me. My eyes are usually pretty good but I can't see that cotton-picking thing. Do you have a smaller copy of this?

Ms. CLAYBROOK. Why don't we just let you have this one.

I am sorry. We had difficulty getting the chart blown up to the size that we would have liked.

We, of course, are here today to testify in favor of the bill by Mr. Oberstar, H.R. 4496, and we are pleased to be able to do that for a number of reasons. This legislation will deal with two major issues that we face on our highways today. Number one, that larger trucks are much less safe, and number two, that longer trucks are less safe.

For the past 50 years there has been a dangerous pattern of increasing truck lengths and weights as part of the trucking industry has over the years successfully exploited the ambiguities in our current laws and applied pressure on the States to approve heavier and longer trucks on State highways that are not permitted on the Federal interstates. In virtually every instance in which it has succeeded in obtaining these higher length limits, it has followed with pressure to raise weight limits and so on, back and forth.

Now, I would like to deal with several of the numbers that Mr. Donohue presented to the committee. One was a chart showing a 33 percent, I believe, reduction in light truck and heavy truck fatality rates. I would like to point out that that was dealing with trucks for 10,000 pounds all the way up to whatever the top number in any State that is allowed.

And when you look-we were presented with this by Mr. Donohue at a previous hearing on the Senate side two years ago— when you look at just heavy trucks, that number is incorrect. And so I think he was sort of misleading to the committee.

The number for the heavy trucks, I haven't looked at the most recent figures, but at that time, 1992, I believe that is where his chart went, the number of heavy truck fatalities was fairly constant and did not have the significant reduction that he showed for all trucks above 10,000 pounds.

We are focused here today on heavy trucks. Mr. Donohue knows that. I think it was very misleading of him to present a chart that didn't make that clear.

Second, he had another chart which is at the beginning of his testimony, in which he refuted the figures that we have presented to the committee. First of all, this is just to show that you trailer lengths have grown from 1946 to 1994. So that is just an example of what has been happening. We have certainly had a significant increase.

This is the chart I want to discuss for just a minute that Mr. Donohue was purporting to challenge. This is based on a study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Mr. Donohue's chart purported to show that the heavier the truck, the lower the injury and accident-the fatality rates. And in fact what he did was in his chart to combine trucks on single-lane highways and dual-lane highways and all different types of highways. Of course, on the single-lane highways you are more likely to have lighter trucks and you have a higher fatality rate. And so when you combine all different types of highways, which the people who did this research said absolutely you cannot do, it is very misleading. Then you show that some of the lighter trucks which are on the single-lane highways do have a higher fatality rate.

But when you separate them by type of highway, the heavier trucks do this. This is directly from the University of Michigan. And the heavier they get, the more the fatal crashes increase.

And so that is the second thing that was misleading about what Mr. Donohue presented to you today. And he suggests that because we didn't divide it by every single weight category, by 5,000 pounds each, that we were being misleading. But we could certainly do that for the committee if you would like to see it in smaller gradations, but using different types of highways to present the data, which the researchers who did the study said you must do, produces these results.

I might also comment that the American Trucking Association, while they talk safety, don't always act safety. I think what probably irritates Mr. Donohue the most about CRASH is the fact that what he is interested in is using research for his own purposes that presents it in his own way. What is really frustrating to him is when a citizen group is on the spot, an advocate, they are able to talk with the committee Members just as he is, able to testify before the committee just as he is, and is able to refute what he has to say.

The committee asked Mr. Donohue to serve on a panel with me so that we could have a back and forth on these issues. Mr. Donohue refused.

I think that that is a small indication of what really is at the bottom line of his irritation, which is that he doesn't really want to have a debate on the merits and on the facts. He wants to make his own presentation and leave.

I do appreciate, Mr. Valentine, your asking him to listen to our testimony. The fact is that the American Trucking Association has opposed the vehicle underride guard, which we are proponents of. We can argue over the particulars of any proposal.

The proposal they favor is one at 22 inches high which is too high to catch the full force for most small cars on the highway. They don't favor it being energy absorbing, which we do, and they don't want it to apply to most trucks on the highway, which we do. The current proposal has it apply to only 80,000 of the 500,000 rigs that come out, tractors and trailers every year. They have also opposed the anti-lock brake for years.

I will submit for the record a list of their statements to the docket of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of their opposition to the anti-lock brakes over the years.

They have also opposed reducing the hours of service. The hours of service for truck drivers, which is not a vehicle issue but a human issue, are inhumane in our view-70 hours a week-up to 70 hours a week. No other workers in America are subjected to those hours of service. And there was even a proposal which they favored which would have increased it up to 100 hours of service a week. So I mean, eight days, not a week, eight days. So we will submit some documents for the record on that.

And also I would like to submit if I could, Mr. Chairman, something called CRASH Facts, which lays out some of the factual information which apparently also irritates Mr. Donohue.

[The information received follows:]

« PrécédentContinuer »