The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted every aspect of our society, changing the way we work and the way we live. While this is something none of us anticipated, we are all working to adjust and navigate this unprecedented experience.
We, in the commercial motor vehicle enforcement community, know how important commercial drivers are to the fabric of our society. However, now more than ever, this truth is clearly evident as the public realizes that almost everything they need is transported by truck, driven by a truck driver, at some point within the supply chain.
In a statement by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, truck drivers responding to the U.S. emergency declaration by delivering critical goods and services, ranging from food to medical supplies, have been designated essential critical infrastructure workers. The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security executed this authority to provide strategic guidance, promote a national unity of effort, and coordinate the overall federal effort to ensure the security and resilience of the U.S. critical infrastructure.
As the organization comprised of the commercial motor vehicle safety officials who enforce motor carrier safety regulations throughout North America, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance is working closely with the companies and organizations whose members are on the frontline ensuring the public receives food, medicine and resources needed to weather this extraordinary global pandemic.
The Alliance is also working closely with government agencies and public-sector associations across Canada, Mexico and the U.S. to ensure safety regulations and restrictions that may limit a prompt response to this constantly changing environment are eased while still ensuring transportation safety on our roadways. Public safety is our top priority, from ensuring inspectors are protecting their personal health and wellbeing during roadside inspections to ensuring truck drivers can deliver essential goods and services, efficiently and safely.
We’d like to thank the truck drivers who are traversing our roadways to make sure our communities have what they need during this time of prolonged uncertainty. We’d like to thank law enforcement personnel who are working diligently to inspect commercial motor vehicles and drivers to ensure that as we urgently respond to this time-sensitive crisis, our safety standards are still being followed, maintained and enforced. And thank you to the federal agencies across North America for working quickly to provide appropriate regulatory relief to commercial drivers transporting emergency relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Rest assured that our government agencies, commercial motor vehicle enforcement personnel, inspectors, motor carriers, and truck and bus companies and associations are working together to best respond to this pandemic. We are all in this fight together.