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Fan Male: The Road Ahead
Steve Owings: Co-founder of Road Safe America
by Drew Ermenc
October 25, 2007
W
hat on God's earth is making people do this?" Steve Owings asked his wife, Susan as their
car slowed to a crawl. It was January 2003, and the Georgia couple was stuck in a blinding
snowstorm on the way to Lexington, Va. Forced to creep in the right lane behind a stream of red
lights, Steve was helpless as massive tractor-trailers roared by them, unrelenting and unconcerned
for the dangers they posed to their fellow drivers.
"They would just come barreling
by at what seemed like 70 miles per hour. They would blind you with the snow they would throw up,"
he recalls, emotion still gripping his voice. "It was the most awful drive I've ever had to make in
my life."
It was an eerie situation for the Owings, who were in the middle of every parent's worst
nightmare. Hardly more than a month earlier, their son, Cullum, a senior at Washington and Lee
University, had been killed in a highway collision. The good-looking, fun-loving business major was
about to graduate in June and had plans to enter the Peace Corps. He died in 2002 when he and his
brother, Pierce, a Washington and Lee freshman, were driving back to college after Thanksgiving
break. Interstate traffic forced them to a crawl, and the driver of a 70,000- pound tractor-trailer
running on cruise control saw the congestion too late and slammed into their car. Pierce walked
away.
Now, Steve and Susan were on their way to Cullum's memorial service at the college, creeping
along the same route in treacherous and terrifying conditions. And they were sharing the road with
the
unforgiving and careless trucks that continued to speed by, only inches from their car.
The Owings survived that night
, but the memories – and the pain of Cullum’s loss – cultivated a passion in
Steve, Susan, and Pierce to improve road safety in America. Steve soon began researching the
trucking industry.
“We learned some horrendous facts,” he says, noting that every month, road fatality
statistics involving trucks are roughly equivalent to the death total of two commercial airline
crashes.
Owings and his family co-founded Road Safe America, a transportation advocacy group that is
making progress toward safer roads and highways. The organization is quickly gaining respect on
Capitol Hill and throughout the transportation industry with its first mission: Regulate the speed
limit of trucks on the roadways.
Together with nine major truck carriers, including familiar names U.S. Express, Schneider
National Inc. and Dart Transit Co., Road Safe America has filed a request with the United States
Department of Transportation to enforce the use of a speed governor on all trucks, and to set the
speed at 68 mph. A governor is a device used to regulate how fast a vehicle can go. All trucks are
already equipped with one. Whether a trucking company turns on the device is an entirely different
story. Owings points out that the United States lags behind many other countries in trucking
regulations. “The countries of the European Union have had a limit of 56 miles per hour for
decades. Japan has had 55 miles per hour. And Australia just passed a law that limits speed at 65
miles per hour,” he says.
Since filing the request last fall, Owings has already seen overwhelming support for his
measure, with organizations such as the American Trucking Association, AAA, the Governors Highway
Safety Association, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the Advocates for Highway and
Auto Safety all backing the bill. “We’re getting tremendous support,” he says, “We’ve got a lot of
momentum. This thing is moving along – by Washington standards – at lightning speeds. We’re pleased
it’s moving fast for the process.”
Road Safe America has also been the major force behind what it’s calling Drive Safer Sunday,
an effort by the group to promote safe driving across the country. “[Drive Safer Sunday] is just
one of the tactics we’ve used to call the nation’s attention to drive more safely: Stay off the
cell phone, stay alert, buckle up – obvious things to get you home safe,” he says. “Both the
Georgia governor and the U.S. Senate have declared the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Drive Safer
Sunday,” he says.
The day is meaningful for its dual purpose: It’s the busiest traffic dayof the year, and it
is also the anniversary of Cullum’s death. “People are just trying to get home,” explains Owings.
The day is gaining in popularity and purpose, and a major sponsor will soon be announced that will
help promote the day with a national advertising campaign. His organization does not have an agenda
against truckers. “We’re not anti-truckers, we’re just pro-road safety,” he explains. “I think a
lot of truckers think of us as an enemy like other safety organizations, but the truth is, I think
we’re their best friend.”
Because of deregulation in the industry, he believes truck drivers are working longer hours
and making less money than they were 20 years ago. “It’s unconscionable,” he says. “I can make an
effective argument that truck drivers have at least as much responsibility – maybe more from a
public safety standpoint – than airline pilots do. When you buy an airline ticket, you’re
voluntarily putting yourself in that plane,” he argues. “Yet every citizen that is on the road is
out there involuntarily at the mercy of professional truck drivers every day – and in very close
proximity to them. We’re at these people’s mercy.”
Truck drivers should be rested, trained and paid commensurately with that awesome
responsibility. “That’s not what we have,” he says. “We want to make their lives a lot more like it
used to be, when they were the knights of the road.”
Don Osterberg, vice president of safety and driver training at Schneider National, a leading
North American trucking company, believes Owings’ perspective and motivation are the reasons why
Road Safe America is advancing in an arena in which others advocacy groups have struggled.
“Steve genuinely recognizes that the transportation industry is the lifeblood of the
economy. He sees that through collaboration we can be more effective than an adversarial
relationship,” Osterberg says. “Steve has a very emotionally compelling story, and that energy and
the penetrating nature of that message is very helpful for me to really create that emotional
connection with my organization and with my counterparts in the industry.”
Dave Fitzgerald, president and CEO of ad agency Fitzgerald + Co., watched his son and Cullum
grow up together, and he’s witnessed the passion and motivation that was born from his death. “It’s
a labor of love for Steve, Susan and Pierce. When you lose a son or a brother, the impact is not
fleeting; it’s lifelong,” he says. “When people are successful, they are successful for rational
and emotional reasons. When you have all the emotion working from this tragedy, and then you have
all the rational points in terms of how this argument is so easy, you’re going to have success.
That combined with [Owings’] personal salesmanship is quite a powerful punch.”
Through all of his dedication to improving road safety, Owings never loses sight of why he’s
working so hard for change. “From a personal standpoint, this has been a wonderful experience for
me to see the hand of God getting involved and making good things come out of a tragic situation,”
he says. “It’s just been amazing. We’re not people who know how to do these sorts of things. It’s
happening because I believe my son is with the Lord now, and they are working together on our
behalf.”
