Kelly MesserschmidtTechnical Communications Manager
Messerschmidt Safety Consultants
Placing limits on how heavy a load a trucker can legally carry is a frequently debated issue. Facing pressure to move larger loads, some trucking operations view fines for weight limit violations as part of the price of doing business, and they haul heavier loads than they are permitted to.
Illegal overloads create serious problems for truck stopping distances, overall highway safety and the integrity of road pavements, and they also maximize demands on truck weight enforcement units. Without enforcement, law-abiding trucking companies face a competitive disadvantage when they comply with the law and others don't.
According to the Alabama Department of Public Safety (DPS), Motor Carrier Safety Unit weight crews in Tuscaloosa and Montgomery are currently field-testing eWeight, an electronic/paperless system for filing weight reports. EWeight will improve the efficiency of the DPS Motor Carrier Safety Unit by eliminating the many hours needed to manually input data from the 4000-6000 paper forms processed each month. In addition, the electronic system will help truckers by decreasing the amount of time spent at weigh stations and giving them more on-duty hours available to move freight.
EWeight automatically calculates axle weight, and the statistical information it generates will improve the efficiency of weight crews. The eWeight system follows other electronic systems such as eCite and eCrash, which were developed for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC)’s Alabama Dashboards for Visualization, Analysis and Coordinated Enforcement (ADVANCE) program, by The University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS). Learn more about ADVANCE. Read an article about the Alabama initiative in the May 5, 2011 edition of The Blue Light.
Placing limits on how heavy a load a trucker can legally carry is a frequently debated issue. Facing pressure to move larger loads, some trucking operations view fines for weight limit violations as part of the price of doing business, and they haul heavier loads than they are permitted to.
Illegal overloads create serious problems for truck stopping distances, overall highway safety and the integrity of road pavements, and they also maximize demands on truck weight enforcement units. Without enforcement, law-abiding trucking companies face a competitive disadvantage when they comply with the law and others don't.
According to the Alabama Department of Public Safety (DPS), Motor Carrier Safety Unit weight crews in Tuscaloosa and Montgomery are currently field-testing eWeight, an electronic/paperless system for filing weight reports. EWeight will improve the efficiency of the DPS Motor Carrier Safety Unit by eliminating the many hours needed to manually input data from the 4000-6000 paper forms processed each month. In addition, the electronic system will help truckers by decreasing the amount of time spent at weigh stations and giving them more on-duty hours available to move freight.
EWeight automatically calculates axle weight, and the statistical information it generates will improve the efficiency of weight crews. The eWeight system follows other electronic systems such as eCite and eCrash, which were developed for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC)’s Alabama Dashboards for Visualization, Analysis and Coordinated Enforcement (ADVANCE) program, by The University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS). Learn more about ADVANCE. Read an article about the Alabama initiative in the May 5, 2011 edition of The Blue Light.
No comments:
Post a Comment