Arlington, Va. – Today, American Trucking Associations joined with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the American Bus Association and AAA to unveil the Our Roads, Our Safety partnership aimed at reducing highway fatalities.
“ATA, through our Share the Road highway safety program, has been educating the motoring public about safety for more than three decades, and we are excited to expand our partnership with FMCSA and other highway users,” said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear. “The trucking industry is committed to reducing vehicle accidents, and to meet its safety goals, investing more than $9.5 billion on safety each year in the form of training, technology and developing safety messages like we’ve done in the Our Roads, Our Safety partnership.”
Our Roads, Our Safety is an effort to build a coalition of highway users focused on producing strong, collaborative highway safety messages and using innovative strategies to promote the group’s messages to targeted audiences. ATA, FMCSA, ABA and AAA have a common goal of reducing the number of crashes on our nation’s roads, specifically crashes involving large commercial vehicles. To that purpose, the Our Roads, Our Safety campaign is developing a series of safety videos, advertisements, infographics and social media shareable images to spread safety tips and reminders throughout the country.
“At ATA, we feel it is our duty to work alongside allies in the highway safety sector to ensure that all safety messages are shaped by the professional truck drivers dedicated to promoting highway safety in their day to day operations,” said ATA Executive Vice President of Industry Affairs and COO Elisabeth Barna. “We are proud to work with ABA, AAA and FMCSA to spread a common message that whether you are a truck driver, bus driver or general motorist, we are all responsible for safely sharing our nation’s highways.”
The first Our Roads, Our Safety video covers commercial vehicle blind spots. Coalition partners developed a comprehensive, easy-to-remember animation to provide viewers with a simple explanation of safe and unsafe maneuvers surrounding commercial vehicles. The animation highlights safe zones around a truck and asks drivers to only pass commercial vehicles on the driver’s side, if possible.
Our Roads, Our Safety is also releasing a nationwide social media campaign to generate positive awareness about highway safety. The campaign aims to spread a safety message among critical demographics in key states in order to amplify the visibility and further reduce highway crashes.
ATA’s Share the Road program tours the country to promote safety on the highways by meeting with schools groups, drivers’ education classes, the media and community networks. In partnership with Our Roads, Our Safety, Share the Road continues to develop powerful messages and reach larger audiences each year.
Share the Road is a highway safety outreach program of the American Trucking Associations that educates all drivers about sharing the roads safely with large trucks. An elite team of professional truck drivers with millions of accident-free miles deliver life-saving messages to millions of motorists annually. The safety program is sponsored by Mack Trucks Inc., and supported by TA-Petro, Pre-Pass, Hyundai Translead, OmniTracs, SmartDrive, Mack Leasing, P.S.I., and Bendix. www.atastr.org. Follow Share the Road on Twitter and Facebook.
American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation’s freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward