Members of the American Trucking Associations have been busy at the organization’s annual Management Conference and Exhibition this week in Philadelphia. They have discussed numerous industry issues and elected a new person to lead the organization.
Make Automatic Braking Mandatory
The ATA’s Board of Directors urged the nation’s truck and car manufactures to equip all new vehicles with automatic emergency braking systems, and said it would support a regulation making them mandatory. “The experience of our member fleets tells us that automatic emergency braking systems hold tremendous promise and as such, we believe manufacturers should make this equipment standard and the federal government should seriously look at issuing regulatory standards,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves.
- Infrastructure spending is second only to education as the area the public thinks more money needs to be spent.
- The number of people who believe more needs to be spent on infrastructure has risen 12 points – from 48 percent in 2014 to 60 percent this year.
- 40 percent of the public thinks infrastructure should be a top priority for federal spending.
- 63 percent of Americans believe our roads and bridges are not being properly maintained.
- 53 percent believe it will be necessary to raise taxes to properly maintain roads and bridges.
However, according to the ATA poll, the public remains opposed to raising the fuel tax, raising income taxes, interstate tolling and adding registration fees to pay for needed maintenance. When forced to choose – the public supports raising the fuel tax over tolling, says the ATA.
UPS Exec is New Chairman of the Organization
