Mark your calendars! Operation Safe Driver Week is just around the corner – July 11 to July 17, 2021.

Operation Safe Driver holds activities across the United States, Canada and Mexico to increase commercial vehicle and non-commercial vehicle traffic enforcement, safety belt enforcement, and driver roadside inspections; improve driver regulatory compliance; implement commercial driver educational and awareness programs to the motor carrier population; educate youth about safely sharing the roads with large trucks and buses; increase awareness to the general motoring public about safe operations around commercial motor vehicles.

This year’s Operation Safe Driver Week will take place July 11-17, with an emphasis on speeding. CVSA selected speeding as its focus this year because despite a drop in roadway travel last year due to the pandemic, nationally, traffic fatalities increased. According to the National Safety Council’s (NSC) preliminary estimates, the estimated rate of death on roads last year increased 24% over the previous 12-month period, despite miles driven dropping 13%. The increase in the rate of death is the highest estimated year-over-year jump NSC has calculated in 96 years.

In addition to speeding, law enforcement personnel will be tracking other dangerous driver behaviours throughout Operation Safe Driver Week, such as reckless or aggressive driving, distracted driving, following too closely, improper lane change, failure to obey traffic control devices, failure to use a seat belt, evidence of drunk or drugged driving, etc.

Results from 2020

Enforcement officials interacted with 29,921 commercial motor vehicle drivers during 2020’s Operation Safe Driver Week. Commercial motor drivers received a total of 10,736 traffic enforcement warnings and citations. Broken out, that’s 6,077 warnings and 4,659 citations.

The top five traffic enforcement citations given to commercial motor vehicle drivers were:

  1. Speeding/violation of basic speed law/driving too fast for the conditions – 2,339 (50.20%)
  2. Failure to use seat belt while operating commercial motor vehicle – 1,003 (21.53%)
  3. Failure to obey traffic control device – 617
  4. Using a hand-held phone/texting – 269 (4.35%)
  5. Improper lane change – 122

More Blitzes

Along with Operation Safe Driver Week, there will be two more blitzes to note: Brake Safety Week (August 22 to 28) and an unannounced one-day brake safety enforcement initiative. The latter can happen at any time during 2021.

For more information, visit our blog Inspection Blitzes to Note in 2021.