By Aaron Ladage
staff writer

When Steve St. James drives along I-5, it’s not the load on his trailer that’s interesting – it’s the officer, armed with video camera and radio, sitting in his passenger seat that gets your attention.

Talk about redefining “riding shotgun.”

Since July of 2003, Washington State Patrol officers have been riding along in the cabs of trucks as part of a statewide pilot program known as “Step Up and Ride.” The program – which was started after a trooper noticed that a majority of fatal accidents involving commercial vehicles were caused by four-wheelers – gives officers the opportunity to catch dangerous drivers in the act as they cut off or drive recklessly around big rigs.

“In our state in 2004, we had 48 fatalities involving commercial vehicles,” said Capt. Coral L. Estes, commander of the commercial vehicle division of the Washington State Patrol. “Out of those 48, 75 percent were caused by the passenger car, not the commercial vehicle.”

Now, after two years of on-and-off operation, the fledgling project has made it to the big leagues. The state patrol has received a $500,000 grant from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and administrative support from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and the Washington Trucking Association.

“NHTSA, which is also very big on trying to reduce fatalities in the states, said ‘You know, we need to be involved in this.’ ” Estes said. “It’s a really unique partnership, because normally those two (NHTSA and FMCSA) don’t go hand-in-hand with what their goals and objectives are – they’re two separate entities. We needed to team up because it overlaps so much.”

The newly funded ride-alongs, public opinion surveys and a media awareness campaign will take on a new name – Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks, or TACT. The program will take place in Washington between June 30 and Oct. 3, at which point it will be re-evaluated. If it’s a success, Estes said, officers could soon be doing ride-alongs in trucks across the country.

St. James said the program is a trucker’s dream. He can’t even count the number of times an officer in the cab could’ve helped catch a passenger vehicle driving recklessly around his rig.

Once, when he was driving without an officer and hauling an oversize load, a woman cut between some construction barrels and into his lane. The car came so close to hitting his truck, it took the “Oversize Load” sign off of his front bumper.

“The scary part was that she had a little car seat in the back,” St. James said. Although he did get the car’s plate number and phoned the police, he said he can’t be certain the driver was ever caught, since his word was all that could prove her guilt.

“It happens to drivers around here daily,” St. James said. “They all have their own horror stories. It happens all the time.”

When St. James is on the clock with “Step Up and Ride,” his employer, Boeing Co., donates his time. His only cargo is an empty flatbed trailer and an officer serving as copilot. When a passenger vehicle makes an illegal or dangerous move, the officer – who’s also videotaping the entire thing – radios ahead to a “chase car,” which then makes the stop and issues a warning or citation.

“The officers are just in awe when they see what our visibility is,” St. James said. “They can catch them four or five cars ahead – it doesn’t even have to be me they’re cutting off.”

The enforcement convoy usually travels stretches of I-5, I-405 and I-95. In a four-hour time stretch, St. James said he and the posse of officers usually stop more than 20 vehicles.

“I think it’ll make a lot of improvements, especially when they come to pointing fingers at the trucks being the problem,” St. James said. “I think they’ll see that it’s actually the car drivers out there being the cause of all this.”

Estes said that public perception, which they gather and test at public places and shopping malls, is that trucks are the ones causing all of the collisions, and that people are surprised when the data proves otherwise.

“The public believes that when they pass a big truck, and they can see the front of that big truck in the rear-view mirror, that it’s safe for them to pull back in front,” Estes said. “In reality, it takes (the length of) a football field to pull an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer rig to a complete stop when it’s hauling a full load.”

Although dangerous drivers can be slapped with a ticket – which in Washington ranges from $101 to $525 for negligent driving, following too close, unsafe lane changes or failure to yield – Estes said another key component of the program is education. Every person stopped also receives information about the importance of safe driving near large trucks.

“People are totally unaware of the situations they’re putting themselves in,” Estes said. “Why would you put yourself in these horrendous positions where you’ve got 80,000 pounds coming down on you at 60 miles an hour?”

NY Thruway toll discounts are not universal

Only E-ZPass, high-volume
users get the breaks

By Aaron Ladage
Staff Writer

Daryl Smith is ready to start paying his tolls in small change – lots of change.

Each week, the OOIDA member from Cranberry Lake, NY, travels about 400 miles on the New York State Thruway. Since May 15, when the road’s toll hike went into effect, he’s been spending about $130 more a week to drive the same stretch of road he’s been traveling for years.

Smith and his father, who is also an owner-operator, don’t have a lot of options, but they’re planning to fight the authority in the only grassroots way they can think of.

“They nickel-and-dime us, so we need to nickel-and-dime them back,” Smith said, describing his plan to pay with coins.

On April 25 the Thruway Authority approved a $2.6 billion improvement plan for the 641-mile stretch of road. The measure includes an “average” toll increase of 25 percent for four-wheelers and 35 percent for some commercial trucks, officials said in a press release.

Michael Fleischer, executive director for the authority, said there were three different methods for commercial drivers to reduce their toll payments, including: a special E-ZPass discount for tractor-trailer combinations up to 48 feet; a 5 percent discount for trucks and 10 percent discount for passenger vehicles who use the E-ZPass system; and a graduated volume discount for frequent users.

Unfortunately for Smith, his rig doesn’t fit the authority’s idea of “average.”

He, like many OOIDA members, pulls a 53-foot trailer and therefore isn’t eligible for the special toll discounts.

According to a calculator on the authority’s Web site, he expected his weekly toll charges to jump from approximately $60 to $189.40 – more than a 300 percent increase with the new plan.

Even if Smith were eligible for the special discounts, he still might not be able to afford to enroll in the E-ZPass system.

Like many owner-operators who lack the financial backing of a larger company, Smith must pay cash for his tolls. E-ZPass users must post a bond or cash deposit totaling three times their monthly toll expenses, with a minimum of $1,000 down, according to the authority Web site.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, said that even with the special E-ZPass discount, 35 percent is an unrealistic rate hike.

“It’s amazing that turnpike officials would entertain increases in tolls of this magnitude and this level – it’s unconscionable,” Spencer said.

“The fact that we have lawmakers in Washington that would like to put every state in that position, to treat highway users in that fashion, is outrageous.”

Originally, tolls on the New York State Thruway were to end after the original bonds that funded the project were paid off in 1996. However, Thruway officials later changed that and said users of the road, not all of the state’s taxpayers, should pay for its upkeep.

Indiana ramps up ramp parking fines

By Aaron Ladage
staff writer

Indiana law-enforcement officials aren’t doing anything to ease the state’s truck parking crisis, but they are charging bigger fines when truckers can’t find a legal parking spot.

The Indiana fine for illegally parking along interstate highways increased to $500 as of May 1. The fines had ranged from $80 to $150, depending on the county. State officials said the increase was designed to keep commercial vehicles from parking on roadsides as well as on- and off-ramps.

“This has been a longtime issue we’ve been trying to resolve,” said Maj. Ed Reuter, commander of the Indiana State Police’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division. “There’s a lot of people who think that we’re adversaries of the trucking industry, and we’re not – we want to work with them.”

Besides citing complaints from residents along interstates who say parked trucks create a safety risk by limiting visibility for passenger vehicles, Reuter said truckers have left some unwanted parting gifts behind.

“Our people are finding urine bottles and human waste and trash, and the ramps are breaking down,” Reuter said. “We felt that we needed to make this thing more of a public issue, to bring it to their attention and educate them …”

Additionally, Reuter said drivers who are ticketed for ramp parking may also face Level II or Level III inspections of their rigs.

The higher fine does not bode well for truckers already taxed to find parking in the state.

According to a 2002 study on commercial truck parking by the Federal Highway Administration, Indiana was classified as having a shortage of available spots, ranking 39th out of all 50 states for available truck parking.

The lack of parking is compounded by the lukewarm reception truckers are receiving at the state’s rest areas.

Steve McAvoy, facilities management director for the operations support division of the Indiana DOT, said that although the state doesn’t have a policy prohibiting overnight parking, it’s not encouraged.

“The way we kind of look at it now is that if they don’t park there, they (truckers) are going to be a safety hazard driving on the interstate tired,” McAvoy said.

“We basically kind of have to let them stay there.”

Reuter said the State Police are partnering with media outlets to get the word out about the stiffened penalties, and may post information on the large electronic signs over the interstate. So far, he has already seen the ramp-parking situation improve.

However, he said his organization had no intention of adding or looking into adding commercial truck parking spaces.

“That (lack of parking in the state) could be an issue, but it’s going to be a point where they need to study the routes. The burden is going to be on the driver to try to find it,” Reuter said. “They (the drivers) will make do; they’ll find places. Just don’t use the ramps is all we’re asking.

“We feel that we can educate them, and once we educate them, we feel that they’re really on their own.”