WASHINGTON — Highway regulators have failed to act on more than 100 recommendations to improve truck safety at a time when fatalities have risen for four straight years, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Priorities must change in 2015, with more anti-collision technology, better limits on driver hours and tighter regulation of trucking companies with high accident rates, the NTSB said Tuesday in at a news conference.

The National Transportation Safety Board says deaths due to accidents involving truckers have risen for four years. The Associated Press

The accidents that injured comedian Tracy Morgan in June and killed four members of a college softball team in September cast new light on America’s 2 million truckers, who are involved in crashes that kill almost 4,000 people a year. The NTSB said it’s time for regulators to act on its more than 100 recommendations to improve trucking safety.

“There’s a whole suite of technology that’s ready for prime time now that would reduce crashes,” Donald Karol, NTSB’s director of highway safety investigations, said in an interview.

The NTSB is pushing the use of sensors to warn truck drivers when they’re about to strike someone from behind or to alert when a vehicle changes lanes.

The agency made the plea as it unveiled its “Most Wanted List” of transportation improvements for 2015. In addition to trucking, the NTSB also said more attention should be given to rail tank-car safety, airline pilot compliance, distracted driving, and drug and alcohol impairment.

The number of people killed in large-truck crashes increased for the fourth straight year, to 3,964 people in 2013, which includes truckers, pedestrians and the occupants of vehicles that collided with the big rigs.

Related Stories