Welcome to the Fast Lane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation

FMCSA Administrator Hill Shares Safety Message From NASCAR’s Rusty Wallace

This year, Rusty Wallace has been helping us get the word to commercial motor vehicle drivers on the lifesaving importance of wearing safety belts.   A poster and a TV and radio announcement can be downloaded here.

I have asked Rusty to contribute a message specifically for “The Fastlane.” Here’s Rusty in his own words:

Hi everyone, NASCAR Champion Rusty Wallace here, reminding you to always be ready and be buckled. 

Buckling your safety belt only takes a few seconds, but it can save lives and prevent life-changing injuries to you, to your loved ones and to others.

Trust me, I know this first hand.  After flipping down the backstretch at Daytona over 20 times in 1993 and then over 30 times at Talladega the same season, there is no way that I’d be alive to write this today if I didn’t make it a point to buckle up each and every time I get into a vehicle.

Like many of you, our race car transporter drivers are on the road for hundreds of thousands of miles each year and we insist on them being buckled up every single time they get on the road.  As professional drivers, they have to remember that their safety belt not only helps them during a crash, but helps them to avoid a crash, by keeping them in position, behind the wheel and in control.

Look, it’s pretty simple to me; if you don’t buckle up behind the wheel, you’re endangering both yourself and everyone around you.  There‘s no reason not to wear your safety belt. 

In 2006, 805 occupants of large trucks were killed in crashes. If you don’t wear your safety belt, you’re increasing your chances of becoming one of them, it’s that simple.  It’s as black and white as this: if you don’t want to die, wear your safety belt.  Period.

-Rusty

In Case You Missed It

I want to bring two items from the Washington Post to your attention—an article on traffic on Washington-area roads, and an editorial supporting our proposal to auction airline takeoff slots at New York City’s congested airports.

Today’s Post features a front page story on the cost of congestion to the Washington, DC region. The article explains very well the negative effects congestion has not only on quality of life, but on local businesses as well. Our proposal to refocus, reform and renew the nation’s surface transportation system would give communities like Washington the flexibility and resources they need to battle the kind of congestion so vividly described in this article. You can read more about the proposal here.

And this weekend, the Post editorialized in favor of our plan to auction peak takeoff slots in New York airports. Our proposal will keep airfares competitive and service robust at these three busy, and capped, airports by giving airlines a chance to enter the market or expand their current operations. Indeed, in markets like Philadelphia where new airlines have entered the market, the average fare dropped by 25 percent in less than one year. The Post wrote our plan is a “good idea,” and agreed that a preferred takeoff slot is a “commodity that belongs to you, the taxpayer,” and that “airlines should no longer get it free.”

The story and the editorial give further credence to our argument that the way we pay for transportation is at least as important as how much we pay. We can choose to pay for our transportation systems through wasted time, unreliability, pollution, higher taxes and ineffective spending strategies, or we can choose to pay directly and transparently. The latter will usher in a new era of high speed, high tech and clean mobility, while the former will simply produce more economic loss and a declining quality of life.

-Secretary Peters