Michelin Americas Truck Tires has joined Mack Trucks and Chevron Delo as a sponsor of the American Trucking Associations’ Share the Road highway safety program.
Share the Road has been delivering the trucking industry’s safety message to major traffic-choked cities and media markets across the United States since 2000. At each event, million-mile, accident-free professional truck drivers simulate real-life highway situations to illustrate their car-truck safety lessons. The visits include highway ride-alongs for local news media to provide them with an “up close and personal” look at local driving habits from a truck driver’s unique point of view.
Share the Road safety presentations feature a Mack Vision tractor using Chevron Delo lubricants and a 53-foot trailer provided by GE Trailer Fleet Services, now rolling on Michelin tires. For many local television viewers and newspaper readers, the demonstrations are their first exposure to critical safety information about tractor-trailer blind spots, turning space requirements and lengthy stopping distances.
The information can be lifesaving, as both the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety report that as much as 75 percent of all fatal car-truck crashes begin with an error on the part of the car driver. Further, according to the FMCSA, 35 percent of fatal car-truck crashes occur in a truck’s blind spots. Share the Road and other trucking industry safety initiatives are credited, in part, for the rate of fatal crashes involving large trucks falling to its lowest point in 30 years, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
