Updated July 5, 2022, to reflect 2021 Operation Safe Driver results -- the 2022 Operation Safe Driver blitz takes place July 10-16.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of truck-enforcement jurisdictions around the country and federal enforcement and trucking industry representatives typically stages its annual traffic enforcement event, Operation Safe Driver, in July. The enforcement effort in 2020 responded to what some have called a veritable epidemic in speed-related fatality crashes all around the nation during and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. That's across all vehicle types but, anecdotally among truckers, particularly evident in witnessed reckless behavior by garden variety motorists.
Following the 2020 Operation Safe Driver event, CVSA reported about three times as many warnings and citations issued to passenger vehicle drivers as to truckers during the event, the largest category of violation being speeding. The 2021 event proceeded similarly, with more than 9,000 citations issued to passenger-vehicle drivers and just around 3,000 to professional truckers. (Operation Safe Driver is unique among CVSA-promoted enforcement initiatives in focusing not just on truckers' compliance with safety regs and state laws governing operation on the roadways, but also passenger-vehicle drivers' behavior around trucks.)
When it comes to moving violations issued to truckers, though raw numbers nationally declined in 2020 by roughly 20% from 2019 levels, the long-term upward trend of greater and greater percentages of violations indicating enforcement focused on driver behavior is continuing. Speeding violations are always the biggest single contributor to those numbers.
