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What is the Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) Program?

Many people who drive their vehicles down the highway every day have no idea how to effectively share the road with large trucks. Most drivers fail to realize that commercial vehicles need a much longer distance to stop than small cars and trucks because of their size and weight. The inattention and lack of knowledge these drivers have causes hundreds of accidents each year, many of them deadly.

The Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks program, also known as TACT, is a Selective Traffic Enforcement program that is designed to educate drivers and deter unsafe behaviors by both drivers of passenger vehicles and drivers of commercial vehicles. Their goal is for all drivers to share the road safely and efficiently.

Unsafe Behaviors are Being Considered by the TACT Program

The Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks program focuses on unsafe driving behaviors that relate to cars and commercial trucks sharing the road in a safe manner. These behaviors include aggressive truck driving, tailgating, unsafe lane changes, speeding, failure to yield the right of way and failure to use a turn signal when changing lanes. Each program is responsible for identifying unsafe behaviors that contribute to fatalities and automobile crashes in their particular state.

Components of a Successful Program

Research conducted by many agencies has shown that each aggressive driving program should include the components of evaluation, communication and enforcement. Communication is designed to educate and build awareness. Enforcement is designed to stop drivers who are driving aggressively or unsafely. These components work together to increase driver awareness and raise the driver’s perceived risk of being ticketed for aggressive behavior like unsafe lane changes. The evaluation component is important because it provides feedback and structure for the program. States who address all of these components clearly may be eligible for a federal grant.

Enforcement

Each state should identify the areas where aggressive truck driving and other unsafe practices are most likely to take place and select a few of these areas where communications and enforcement will be applied. It’s also important for the state to develop enforcement tactics that cover the methods they will use and the departments that will be involved in enforcing the laws against unsafe driving. It is essential that the enforcement is visible and vigorous so that unsafe driving behaviors are highly discouraged.

Safe passing and following distances are one of the focuses of this program, unfortunately the distance that drivers should leave between their vehicle and other vehicles depends on many factors, including vehicle size, road conditions and speed. Officers should use their trained judgement to decide whether the following distance a driver is using is safe. Video may be used when available to gauge safe following distance and back up the officer’s judgement in court if necessary.

Some of the most effective enforcement strategies include unmarked cars, aerial surveillance and ride-alongs. Each program should document their own success with various enforcement methods to determine the most effective strategy for their area. It is impossible to directly compare the results of one state to another because of differences in their respective programs.

Timeline

Each state’s program is encouraged to create their own timeline based on the activities they are planning to include. Start and end times should be spelled out during the planning stages so that the state can use the timeline on their grant application and media campaigns. Different aspects of the program may have different timelines, as a detailed timeline is not needed by administrators, media and others who are not directly involved in the program.

The Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks program began in Washington state and is likely to become a national program. It combines the Click It or Ticket model from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Share the Road Safely model from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. It is currently designed to be an 18-month long program, but may be extended or expanded into an ongoing program if it is implemented properly by each state. The highway department of each state is free to determine if their signs from this campaign will be up only for the duration of the program or if they will leave the signs up permanently. The states may also choose to transfer their signs to new locations after the campaign has ended.

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