The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently proposed making it a regulation for all large trucks and buses to come with electronic stability control. The idea is that this safety system, which became a requirement this year for passenger cars, light trucks and SUVs, could result in the prevention of thousands of crashes and hundreds of personal injuries throughout the country.
The safety system works by automatically applying the brakes to individual wheels on a truck or bus, including a motor coach, as soon as a driver starts to lose control. This electronic stability control, which can sense when the driver is about to lose control, would then help to stop the vehicle from rolling over.
This stability safety system would also kick on to prevent a truck or bus from skidding on a slippery road, or from flipping over when a driver suddenly jerks a wheel to avoid an object in a roadway.
According to the NHTSA, the technology could end up preventing more than 2,300 crashes a year that involve larger buses and trucks. This in turn would result in preventing somewhere between 649 and 858 injuries and another 49 to 60 deaths.
So far, safety advocates are fans of this recent proposal, with the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety really driving home how important this would be in terms of buses as millions of families use motor coaches as a way to travel.
Of course, while rollovers are not the only type of accidents involving trucks and buses, they are some of the deadliest. But what do you think about this proposal? Should it be mandated? What other steps can be taken to reduce the number of crashes involving large trucks and buses in Tennessee?