Slow down to get around.

• Author: Kneiss, Sharon H.
• Position: Safe driving practices for waste & recycling vehicle drivers - Life in America

AT 4 A.M., a refuse driver wakes up in his house in Kew Gardens, N.Y. He brews some coffee and grabs the lunch he packed the night before, quietly making his way out the door so as to not wake his wife and two teenage sons. He gets into his car and heads for the Grand Central Parkway to get to the yard where he will put on his reflective gear and get into his garbage truck. He will drive through busy streets for the rest of the workday; it is a routine he has been following five days a week for nearly 15 years.

As the driver starts his route, he takes special care to look at everything happening around his truck as he turns a comer. Midway through his route, he sees a driver texting on her phone, not paying attention to his truck making its way through the intersection. He slows down and shakes his head; this is something he sees all too often. An hour later, a soccer ball rolls into the street and a child, about six or seven years old, runs after it--the driver stops, his heart beating faster as he sees the boy's frantic mother out of his sideview window.

As he slows onto a street in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, two helpers hop off the back of his truck to collect waste from storefronts. The street is narrow and the driver of a red minivan behind him has little patience and zips around his truck and races off--the driver's crew jumps back just in time, the speeding van missing them by inches. It is just another day in this business--just another day of risky work to get the job done.

Every day, thousands of waste and recycling collection workers--what the public calls "garbagemen"--navigate the streets of our communities nationwide performing an important public health service. The individuals operating these trucks take great pride in their work and their contributions to keeping their communities clean and protecting the environment--and they know they have a responsibility to practice the safest behaviors possible, that their actions impact not only themselves, but those of the families and communities they serve.

For many years, members of the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), which represents the U.S.'s private waste and recycling industry, large and small, national and local, have championed best safety practices for their vehicles and their facilities, including comprehensive training, investment in safety technologies, and by empowering employees to practice workplace safety and being vigilant about the...