​Member of OOIDA board of directors featured in education video created by U.S. DOT

Grain Valley, MO… A member of the board of directors for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is featured in a new video talking about sharing the roads with commercial vehicles. The video was created by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Dick Pingel has been on the OOIDA board of directors for six years and also has a truck stop named after him in DeForest, Wisc. as an awardee of the Citizen Driver program with TA/Petro.

The video is part of a series related to the agency’s Our Roads, Our Safety education and outreachprogram. The “Voices of Safety” video campaign seeks to raise public awareness about how to drive safely around the nearly 12.5 million large trucks and buses operating on our nation’s roadways.

The video campaign is part of a larger public awareness effort, and OOIDA is working with FMCSA and their other partners to make progress towards one central mission – reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities involving large trucks and buses on our roadways.

“The messages in the campaign are put together as a collaborative effort and should hopefully resonate with the motoring public,” said Norita Taylor, Director of Public Relations. “It’s important to emphasize the role we all play in highway safety and this program offers safety tips like stopping distances, blind spots and other critical information that all who share the highway need to know.”

Pingel says his input for the video was focused on the topic of distracted driving.

“All the technology that we have in our vehicles today can sometimes make driving more unsafe if we don’t understand that it’s still important to pay attention and maintain control,” he said.

There is also a Facebook page associated with the program found here: https://www.facebook.com/FMCSAOurRoads/

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the largest national trade association representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. The Association currently has more than 160,000 members nationwide. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Mo. area.