Lifesaving highway driving tips were presented in Reno, Nev., as part of the American Trucking Associations’ national Share the Road highway safety tour by top professional truck drivers and other safety partners. The Share the Road educational program also served as a kickoff to the 2008 Nevada Truck Driving Championships.
“The truck driving championships are a celebration of the industry’s safety program,” says Paul Enos, Nevada Motor Transport Association chief executive officer. “It is great to have another fundamental part of trucking’s safety outreach – the Share the Road program – here to teach motorists how to share the road with tractor-trailers. Through efforts like the ones we are highlighting today, the trucking industry is working to make America’s roads the safest they have ever been.”
Congressman Dean Heller, ATA, NMTA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Nevada Highway Patrol and members of the trucking community joined the elite group of drivers to discuss highway safety on Nevada highways and to give tips for safe summer driving.
Featured at the event were professional truck drivers Jerry Adams (C&S Wholesale Grocers) and Clarence Jenkins (UPS Freight). These drivers are members of an elite team of million-mile accident-free truck drivers who deliver the trucking industry’s safety messages across the country. “Highway safety is a way of life,” Jenkins sys. “The drivers competing here in Reno have dedicated their lives to being safe professional drivers. I hope my years of experience behind the wheel of a truck can help the motoring public be a little safer out on our nation’s roads.”
Following the safety demonstration, reporters, photographers and state legislators were given tractor-trailer rides. From the truck driver’s perspective, they viewed safe merging and stopping distances, and learned up close and personal some of the differences between how cars and large trucks operate on the highways. The demonstration was designed to teach specific skills in order for motorists to drive safely around other automobiles and around trucks on the highways.
