Today is the first day of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) weeklong driver-safety traffic enforcement initiative, Operation Safe Driver Week. From July 7 to 13, drivers exhibiting unsafe driving behaviors on our roadways, such as speeding, distracted driving, aggressive driving, following too closely, etc., will be pulled over by law enforcement personnel and may be issued a warning or citation.
Operation Safe Driver Week aims to improve the driving behaviors of passenger vehicle drivers and commercial motor vehicle drivers through educational and traffic enforcement strategies and interactions with law enforcement. The goal is to prevent crashes caused by unsafe driving behaviors.
Law enforcement personnel will report applicable interactions with drivers and citations and warnings to CVSA. That data will be gathered and analyzed, and the results will be released publicly later this year. View the results from previous years of Operation Safe Driver Week.
Each year, Operation Safe Driver Week focuses on a specific unsafe driving behavior in an effort to combat that dangerous habit. The focus area for this year’s Operation Safe Driver Week is reckless, careless or dangerous driving. Any person who drives a vehicle in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is driving recklessly. Careless/dangerous driving is defined as operating a vehicle without due care and attention or reasonable consideration for other motorists or people on the road.
Operation Safe Driver Week is a North American initiative with participation from states/provinces and territories in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. There were 42,795 fatal traffic crashes in the U.S. in 2022. In 2021, there were 1,768 motor vehicle fatalities in Canada. And in 2022, Mexico reported 15,979 road deaths.
Another important aspect of Operation Safe Driver Week is driver education. CVSA’s Operation Safe Driver Program offers resources for teen and new drivers and commercial motor vehicle drivers, along with safe-driving public service announcement videos, which are publicly available for download and distribution.
Through initiatives like Operation Safe Driver Week, law enforcement jurisdictions, the motor carrier industry and federal agencies work together toward the same goal – preventing crashes, injuries and fatalities on North America’s roadways.