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With all due fairness to the supporters of Higher Productivity Vehicles (HPVs) and highway safety advocates

The Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at North Carolina State University (NCSU), while obviously an advocate for highway safety, has a responsibility to promote a data-driven debate on critical issues.  Truck size and weight is such an issue. 

In doing so we have attempted to increase the awareness of industry demands for ‘higher productivity vehicles” (HPV). We have attempted to fairly portray the trucking industry’s position and its desire for increased productivity (i.e., the desire to be able to maximize its ability to transport more product (both in terms of volume as well as weight) while minimizing the number of vehicles,  the required number of drivers, and fuel required to do so. According to the industry, the use of higher productivity vehicles will also have benefits in terms of reduced emissions, and decreased congestion associated with trucks

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We think we have been fair in directing readers of material posted on ITRE’s website to industry claims for HPVs. To the extent that ITRE also supports the operational research needs of North Carolina’s Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) and the state’s Truck Size and Weight Enforcement Program, we have made available the results of research funded by these programs that question the advisability of current industry demands and the general need for a more effective concept of transport operations. . . one that would permit productivity gains by the trucking industry while ensuring the preservation of our surface transportation infrastructure and a safe, shared use travel environment for all users.

ITRE is concerned that the need for a ‘more productive concept of transportation operations’ is becoming of secondary importance to the industry’s desire to achieve immediate productivity gains through the adoption of higher productivity vehicles (in the US), at time when state governments are unable to accommodate the infrastructure and operational requirements of such vehicles. 

Within the research community, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) has sought to increase the awareness of decision makers of the successful adoption of HPVs (which would include Longer Combination Vehicles, or LCVs) in other parts of the world (e.g., Australia, parts of Europe, and Canada). 
In fairness to the ‘opposition’ to HPVs and LCVs, ITRE provides the link below, which is to the website of The Truck Safety Coalition.

http://www.trucksafety.org/index.php/truck-safety-issues/stop-bigger-trucks.html

In posting a link to the Coalition’s site, and to their arguments against ‘big  trucks,’ ITRE does not wish to imply its unilateral support for  the Coalition’s opposition to big trucks – although we do support their concern for the adoption of larger, heavier vehicles in the absence of the types of research that would lend support to the safe operation of such vehicles  within the current infrastructure and regulatory/enforcement environment of transport operations in the US.  ITRE urges the reader to become more familiar with the goals and the results of the Vermont and Maine ‘Pilot’ studies.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), an alliance of  North American government and industry representatives, has recently advocated the need for operational field research that would establish the extent to which there is a measurable relationship between overweight conditions of trucks currently allowed on US roads and safety (as evaluated on the basis of vehicle defects – especially those leading to vehicle out-of-service conditions – that are identified at the time of the overweight violation by the administration of standardized inspections conducted by CVSA-certified inspectors.

All this being said, ITRE continues to take the position that what we need in this country is possibly a ‘transformational’ change in our concept of transport operations, one whose formation is based upon the professional collaboration of industry stakeholders, highway safety proponents, the highway safety research community, as well as state and federal decision makers charged with the development and maintenance of our roadway infrastructure and public safety.