Commercial drivers shouldn’t be allowed on the road if their licenses are suspended.

What could be more straightforward than that?

Yet, Rep. Walter Ash’s effort to require shippers to check the driving records of their truck drivers met with little support when it came before the Transportation Committee along with Tina’s Law, a bill that would toughen penalties for habitually bad drivers.

Tina’s Law – named for Tina Turcotte who was killed in an accident with trucker Scott Hewitt, who was driving on a suspended license at the time – would put teeth in the state laws that apply to habitual offenders, making punishment much tougher for violators. The intent of Ash’s bill was to keep some of those bad drivers off the road in the first place.

As pointed out by some committee members, Ash’s bill had some holes. It did not clearly define what it means to have a safe driving record, nor did it address who would be responsible for checking the licenses of shippers, brokers and receivers.

But despite the problems, Ash’s bill makes a lot of sense. As he says, what company would knowingly put a driver with a suspended license behind the wheel of a 100,000-pound truck hauling its products? Who would take that risk?

Commercial drivers make up only a small fraction of the people with suspended licenses involved in fatal crashes. But already, more and more companies are requiring background and driving record checks for their employees – even ones with only limited time behind the wheel while on the clock – to lower their insurance rates. It’s not a stretch to apply that standard uniformly.

Ash’s bill did not win the support of the Transportation Committee, but there’s still a chance some of it could be included in other legislation. Prevention should be part of any effort to crack down on bad drivers.