Daily Herald Letter: Raise the minimum for truckers' insurance

While the recent proposal from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White to reduce the minimum number of training hours required by new truck drivers in Illinois from 160 hours to 80 hours was withdrawn, the fact that this change was even proposed is deeply concerning.

Truck crash deaths have increased 31 percent throughout the United States from 2011 to 2020, the last available year of data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. In Illinois, truck crash fatalities went up at an even faster rate, 46 percent, resulting in 178 people losing their lives in 2020.

I hope our state elected officials instead promote policies like the INSURANCE Act, introduced by Illinois Democratic U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia, that would make trucking safer.

The INSURANCE Act would increase the minimum insurance requirement for interstate motor carriers from $750,000 per crash, set in 1980, to $5 million (which in 2020 dollars is slightly less than $750,000 in 1980 dollars after adjusting for medical cost inflation). This long overdue update won't change my family's horrific experience, wherein my son Graham was left permanently partially paralyzed after being struck by an impaired and fatigued truck driver employed by a company that only carried the $750,000 policy.

My only hope is that it will protect other families from enduring the same financial hardship we went through due to the medical costs that were not covered by this low policy.

By raising the financial stakes for the insurance companies, we can raise the bar for safety in the trucking industry.

Kate Brown

Gurnee

Posted 3/21/2022 1:00 AM

Link to Letter to the Editor: Letter: Raise the minimum for truckers' insurance (dailyherald.com)