Safety on Maine’s highways is important, but blocking a weight-limit increase for commercial trucks on the interstate for safety concerns is shortsighted.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, transportation officials and others wish to allow 100,000-pound trucks onto the interstate north of the capital. The current limit is 80,000 pounds, and truck-safety advocates feel an increase jeopardizes safety and will more quickly wear down roads and bridges.

Proponents, like Snowe, point to the danger of tractor-trailers traveling on surface streets, with the death of an elderly Bangor woman in May as evidence. The woman was killed while crossing a city street by a turning tractor-trailer.

While this tragedy prompted the latest call for changing the weight limit – the issue has been advocated by Maine’s congressional delegation in the past – the response to another tragedy should help both sides of this issue feel the highway will be safe: Tina’s Law.

Enacted in August, the law named for Tina Turcotte stiffened penalties for habitual offenders of driving laws. Turcotte, of Scarborough, died in July 2005 in a tractor-trailer accident on the Maine Turnpike. The truck driver, Scott Hewitt, had a lengthy criminal driving record, including involvement in another fatal crash.

Keeping dangerous drivers off the road, which Tina’s Law aims to do, will go further to preserve safety on Maine highways than restricting weight limits on tractor-trailers. The trucks are not unsafe; it’s the behavior of those behind the wheel that could be dangerous.

The responsibility for safe truck driving falls on police, with thorough enforcement of Tina’s Law, and the trucking industry, whose purported influence on Maine transportation officials is squarely in the cross hairs of truck safety advocates like Steve Izer.

Izer and his wife, Daphne, of Lisbon, lost their son in a tractor-trailer crash and subsequently founded Parents Against Tired Truckers. Steve Izer is also a member of Maine’s motor carrier review board, and sees firsthand the types of shortcuts taken by truck drivers, such as falsifying logbooks to put in more time at the wheel than legal.

An opponent of the weight increase, what really raises Izer’s ire is bad behavior by truck drivers and the trucking industry. He is right; the way to ensure traveler safety is through responsible companies putting reliable drivers on the road. Izer suggests paying drivers by the hour, rather than the mile.

In the hands of a good truck driver, the weight of a truck – whether 80,000 or 100,000 pounds – should be immaterial. Safe driving, however, is only one step; putting traffic onto proper roads is equally important, and would be achieved by raising the interstate weight limit.

Having tractor-trailers ply city streets or rural byways, in lieu of an available interstate, is illogical and unsafe. Accidents will happen, but forcing trucks onto smaller streets heightens the risk for travelers on those roads each day, whether drivers, pedestrians or cyclists.

A 2004 study by the Maine Department of Transportation also states the frequency of truck accidents on rural highways is four times higher than on the interstate. In total, the study found, upping the interstate’s weight limit would result in three fewer truck crashes annually.

Raising the weight limit north of Augusta is a sound idea, and Maine is ready for it.

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