Road Safe America Responds to Wall Street
Journal Article

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On July 2, 2009, The Wall Street Journal featured an article decrying the closing of many state supported rest stops due to budget reasons. Road Safe America provided the second part of this important story.

The Letter to the Editor below was provided to the WSJ as a response to their feature about the current recession causing the closing of numerous highway rest stops. We feel that a critical element not mentioned by the newspaper is the safety being sacrificed by these closings.

To: The Wall Street Journal
From: Tom Hodgson — Road Safe America — 404.307.7484
Re: Closing of rest stops article

Friday, July 03, 2009

Mike Esterl's excellent story about the pending extinction of our nation's rest stops mentioned, but did not highlight sufficiently, the truly dangerous result we will suffer from this short sighted action.

America's professional truckers may appear to drive all day and all night, but in fact they are mandated to drive a maximum of 11 hours in a day. The balance of the time, the rig must be stopped and hopefully the driver resting. Fatigued drivers causing crashes and unnecessary fatalities resulted in these rules to be written, and now the logical place for the long-haul driver to sleep — the state supported rest area — will no longer be available.

Imagine the life of these hard working professionals. After a day behind the wheel, all they ask is a clean shower, a warm meal and a safe place to park so they can crawl into the tiny bed in the back of the cab and pretend they are home. When rest stops close, where does the 53 foot trailer and huge cab come to a rest? Not just anywhere I can assure you.

If your readers ever travel the interstates at night they will see these heavy commercial trucks parked on exit ramps with the engine turned off. This is likely due to the loss of options for other safe parking. No shower, no meal. Often the state police wake the drivers and instruct them to move on. That's their job to keep the highways safe. But now we have a groggy trucker with his 80,000 lb rig heading down the road looking in vain for a better spot to rest.

Keep the rest stops open. The lives saved from keeping fatigued truck drivers off the road is well worth the money and effort it will take. America is smarter than this.

Sincerely:

Tom Hodgson
Executive Director
Road Safe America