Sec. Of Transportation stresses need for tech to help truckers find parking

Expanding commercial truck parking has become a hot political issue as U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, spoke at a hearing of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on June 27, emphasizing the Biden administration’s commitment to enhancing parking availability for commercial vehicles.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), only enough designated parking spaces exist for one out of 11 large U.S. trucks.

While Secretary Buttigieg called for building more spaces and tech solutions to optimize existing spaces, Lytx has been ahead of the curve the last two years, offering Parked-Highway/Ramp, a feature within its DriveCam event recorder to detect if a truck has stopped for 10 minutes or more and asses if it is in a safe location. When a Parked-Highway/Ramp event occurs, the fleet manager is notified so that they can quickly intervene by sending nearby safe parking locations via GPS directly to their driver.

Truck parking is already at an extreme shortage, and backlogged supply chains have drastically driven up the number of semis on the roads, leading to overcrowded truck stops and pushing many truckers to park in unsafe places, putting themselves and other drivers at significant risk of injury or even death. In fact, the lack of safe parking is even deterring women truck drivers from staying in the industry.