CVSA Hands Out Plenty of Speeding Citations During Operation Safe Driver Week

With millions more passenger vehicles on the roadways than commercial vehicles, it’s no surprise that passenger-vehicle drivers accounted for far more citations during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Operation Safe Driver Week this past summer.

Still, when you take a look at the stats, it’s pretty interesting how skewed the numbers are. Of the more than 17,000 speeding citations law enforcement officers in Canada and the U.S. issued to cars and trucks, more than 16,000 of those were handed to passenger-vehicle drivers. That rounds out to 92 percent.

The CVSA emphasized speeding in their weeklong event due to a recent trend being noted from U.S. and Canadian law officers. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety/Highway Loss Data Institute, speeding has played a role in more than a quarter of crash deaths since 2008.

On top of the more than 17,000 speeding citations that were handed out, law officers issued a total of nearly 47,000 citations (included speeding) ranging from failure to wear a seat belt and improper passing. And, commercial vehicles drivers were only responsible for less than 3,000 of those. According to the data from the CVSA event, the top citations that were handed out include: speeding, failure to wear a seat belt, failure to obey a traffic control device, using handheld phone/texting, improper lane change, among others.

For as many citations that were handed out to drivers, that figure doesn’t paint the whole picture. The amount of warnings drivers received from law officers nearly doubled the number of traffic violation citations (87,000). And, 23,000 of those warnings were for speeding. Truck drivers accounted for 2,100 of those speeding warnings, or less than 10 percent.

Through events such as Operation Safe Driver Week, the CVSA aims to keep drivers in check to ultimately reduce the number of accidents on roadways. Since speeding plays a large role in accidents that result in fatality, we all need to be mindful of our speed and keep it at the posted limit.