During the 2022 Operation Safe Driver Week, which was July 10-16, officers in Canada and the United States pulled over more than 35,000 commercial motor vehicles and passenger vehicles and issued 26,164 warnings and citations to commercial motor vehicle drivers and passenger vehicle drivers engaging in unsafe driving behaviors, ranging from speeding to distracted driving.
Speeding, which was the focus of the 2022 Operation Safe Driver Week, was the top violation — in warnings given and citations issued — for both types of drivers. Officers issued 8586 citations and 7299 warnings for speeding/violating basic speed law/driving too fast for conditions. Broken out, that amounts to 2577 warnings to commercial motor vehicle drivers and 4722 to passenger vehicle drivers. Citations were given to 1490 commercial motor vehicle drivers and 7096 passenger vehicle drivers.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speeding has played a role in more than a quarter of traffic deaths — killing nearly 100,000 people — over the past decade.
In 2020 alone, there were 11,258 speeding-related deaths in the United States. In addition, the American Transportation Research Institute’s recently updated “Predicting Truck Crash Involvement” report found that when a commercial motor vehicle driver receives a speeding violation that increases their likelihood of being involved in a crash by 47 percent. And according to Transport Canada, speeding/driving too fast was a contributing factor in 25.3 percent of fatal crashes in 2020.
In addition, in 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation released its National Roadway Safety Strategy prioritizing safer speeds. The strategy report states that speeding may be addressed and discouraged through education and enforcement, which is the goal of Operation Safe Driver Week.
Operation Safe Driver Week is a seven-day, driver-behavior traffic enforcement and awareness and outreach activity of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA). CVSA’s law enforcement community participates in this voluntary week-long campaign to identify unsafe driving behaviors and target those unsafe drivers for intervention and education to reduce driver-behavior-caused crashes on the roadways.
Participating jurisdictions captured data on driver interactions, warnings, and citations during Operation Safe Driver Week, and submitted that data to CVSA.
Click here to see more results from 2022 Operation Safe Driver Week.