Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 7, 1995                   TAG: 9504070086
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

GROUP FIGHTS EFFORT FOR BIGGER TRUCKS

``The cars are getting smaller and the trucks keep getting bigger,'' said Jack Rendler, executive director of Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, or CRASH. ``That is what intimidates most people that call our 1-800 hotline [(800)272-7412]: the size of the vehicle next to them.''

At a Federal Highway Administration hearing Thursday, CRASH members said a preliminary Federal Highway report shows the agency is biased toward the trucking industry's case for lifting federal limits on the length and weight of trucks. The members argued that bigger trucks would be unsafe for other drivers and would tear up the highways faster.

But trucking industry supporters, such as David Berry of Swift Transportation of Phoenix, said lifting the caps would help truckers who face consumers' demands to be ``on time, all the time'' and would reduce the traffic of heavy trucks.

Current federal guidelines generally limit trucks to a weight of 80,000 pounds and a length of 48 feet for semi-trailers or a combination of two 28-foot trailers. Truckers are pushing Congress to remove the limits, and are particularly interested in using three-trailer combinations.

Even though the report is not expected to be completed before December 1996, safety advocates are fighting over the preliminary report because they fear it could lead to a final report that undercuts their case against larger trucks. The members of CRASH - which is funded by a variety of consumer and safety interests as well as rail-equipment suppliers - complain that the FHWA study is tilted toward lifting the caps. As an example, a spokesman cited a passage that said the research would ``analyze opportunities forgone'' by the length limitations.

``The whole exercise is designed to make the case for longer, heavier trucks, not make the existing ones safer,'' said Joseph Bosco, a CRASH board member who spoke at the FHWA hearing.

But Charles Medalen of the FWHA's office of chief counsel that no decisions have been made by people conducting the study, and things could go either way.

``If it turns out that heavier and longer trucks are interfering with safety, then we would not go forward with a recommendation,'' Medalen said.

Most agree that damage to bridges and highways is a major concern for large trucks.

Federal Highway Administration statistics show that one 80,000-pound tractor-trailer does as much damage to the roads as 9,600 cars. ``Trucks definitely cause considerably more damage than cars do,'' said Medelan. However, medium and heavy trucks accounted for 6.8 percent of all vehicle miles traveled in the United States in 1992, but only 3.5 percent of all motor vehicles involved in crashes.