Congress will take another stab at passing legislation providing tax credits for heavy-vehicle safety systems, including brake stroke monitoring, vehicle stability control, lane departure warning and collision warning technology.

The "Commercial Motor Vehicle Advanced Safety Technology Tax Act of 2009" (H.R. 2024), sponsored by Reps. Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Geoff Davis (R-KY), mirrors a similar bill introduced last year that failed to get passed. H.R. 2024 would again amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a credit against income tax to help accelerate the adoption of advanced safety systems for commercial vehicles, school and transit buses.

"Reintroducing this bill is the right thing to do," said Stephen Campbell, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA). "It is about encouraging investment in safety through the purchase and installation of technologies on trucks and buses that have been tested and proven to work."

The legislation encompasses both the original equipment (OE) and aftermarket installation of these safety systems and also: creates a tax credit for fleet owners valued at 50 percent of the retail cost of the system with a maximum of $1,500 per technology; allows fleets to purchase multiple technologies, but limit the total amount of credit permissible to $3,500 per vehicle; and allows the overall tax credit for each truck owner or trucking company of up to $350,000 per year for all covered technology purchases.