Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment would prohibit the use of funds for FMCSA and NHTSA-- two agencies--to finalize their joint notice of proposed rulemaking mandating the use of speed limiting devices on heavy-duty trucks and buses.
To support their proposal, FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration focused on the potential decrease in the severity of accidents. However, the severity of accidents is already trending downward, Mr. Chairman.

As a matter of fact, the large truck-involved fatal crash rate per 100 million miles has dropped 74 percent since 1980. Bus-involved fatal crash rate per 100 million miles has dropped 71 percent since 1980 without the Federal Government's involvement in speed limiting device. It is not clear that the mandate would further reduce these crashes.

According to the FMCSA reports, 74.1 percent of truck-involved fatal crashes occur on noninterstates with speed limits lower than the proposed levels. So they are going to put the speed limiter on, but it is not even going to apply where the accidents happen.

These are significant concerns that this mandate may actually increase the number of accidents. Studies have consistently shown that a higher variance of vehicle speed increases accident risk. It is not good to have some vehicles going slow and some going really fast in the same place.

Speed limiters create speed differentials among vehicles. As interaction among these vehicles increases, so does the likelihood of more accidents.

Speed limiters will result in lost productivity, necessitating more heavy-duty vehicles on the road to support current demand because they won't be able to get the product where they want to get it to because they are all going to be going slower, mandated by the Federal Government. Thank goodness the Good Idea Fairy from the Federal Government showed up where nobody asked them to.

Finally, this proposal disregards the authority of States to determine speed limits within their borders.
Again, thank goodness the Federal Government is here to tell all 50 States how to run their railroads and run their highways and their speed limits.

If speed limiters led to fuel savings and increased safety, the market will incentivize the use of these devices. The market does this and does it well and does it best. However, it is not their role. This is not the role of the Federal Government to mandate their use.

Mr. Chairman, I am not asking for less money or more money. I am asking you to save money and save freedom for the American people, make sure their products get to their homes on time, and to get the Federal Government out of the way of one truck trying to pass another one, one doing 54 and another one doing 54.1 miles an hour for 20 miles up the highway.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, the facts are clear that, as I stated, large truck-involved fatal crashes per 100 million miles has dropped 74 percent since 1980, before speed limiters were even available. Bus- involved fatal crashes per 100 million miles has dropped 71 percent since 1980, before all this happened.

Somehow the private sector doesn't want to crash their trucks, and if the private sector and certain companies want to install the speed limiters, they do that because they don't want to crash their trucks. Guess what, folks. Most people don't want to crash their trucks.

Another thing. You know, we love these agencies to do the things that we don't want to do, apparently, and then we create them, and then they do things that we don't want them to do, and we say: Well, we abrogate to ourselves.

Yeah, we were duly elected by the citizens of this country to run the country. They didn't elect any of these people to come up with these rules. They don't want them. So I am here to defend the people that want freedom and don't want nameless, faceless, account-less bureaucrats running our lives. And this is one instance where they are doing it.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for positive consideration of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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