Police officers throughout Lehigh County recently attended a two-week course on how to improve highway safety in the trucking industry.

According to Chris Lengle, traffic safety coordinator with North Central Highway Safety Network, one of the goals of the program is to create a countywide safety task force.

“Coordinating Resources to Advance Safer Highways pilot is a project which is focused on reducing crashes involving commercial motor vehicles,” he said.

PennDOT crash statistics identified five municipalities in Lehigh County with the most crashes involving CMVs. These were Allentown, Lower Macungie, South Whitehall, Upper Macungie and Whitehall townships.

CRASH was formed to leverage existing resources to target high CMV crash areas and to develop a comprehensive plan to reduce CMV crashes.

Participating agencies include the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Pennsylvania State Police and municipal police from Emmaus, Allentown, South Whitehall, Upper Macungie and Whitehall townships.

The project coordinates enforcement dates with participating agencies.

During enforcement details, officers are focusing specifically on commercial motor vehicle moving violations and violations made by non-commercial motor vehicle drivers around a CMV.

The focus is to improve the interactions between commercial and noncommercial motor vehicles on the highways.

Recently, a North American Standard Level III Commercial Vehicle Safety Inspection Training class began at Upper Macungie Township Police Department.

This training is used by Pennsylvania to certify officers to conduct commercial vehicle driver inspections under the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program.

The training focuses on the US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria, provides inspectors with guidance on placing drivers out-of-service and with enforcement guidelines which are applicable throughout Pennsylvania.