Most of us are too familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of our car shuddering around us as a semi-truck barrels past on the freeway. Even the largest SUV can feel like a tin can when measured up against an 18-wheeler. Therefore, it's hard to not feel concern when sharing the road with such large and powerful vehicles. Understandably so, as in 2009 alone the U.S. Department of Transportation reported about 124,000 large trucks and buses were involved in crashes. Nearly 50,000 of those crashes involved injuries, and about 3500 were fatal. Knowing the inherent potential for danger, city and state governments have taken steps to make the roads safer for passenger and commercial vehicles alike. The first step, of course, is ensuring that the persons driving these large commercial trucks are competent to be behind the wheel.
In years past, individual states created their own laws for licensing commercial vehicle drivers. In some states, no testing, skill set, or special licensing to operate a commercial vehicle was required at all. However, in 1986 the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act was signed into law. While the Act did recognize individual state's rights to issue driver's license, it required every state to adopt minimum standards in issuing Commercial Driver's License (CDL). The establishment of minimum certifications and skills for commercial truck drivers is particularly important, as a study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has shown, "Drivers of large trucks and other vehicles involved in truck crashes are ten times more likely to be the cause of the crash than other factors, such as weather, road conditions and vehicle performance."
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