Should there be E-Logbooks for Truckers?

Image via WikipediaFrom: http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/electronic-logbooks-for-truckers-are-good-but-mandate-brings-problems-179720.php

For years, truckers have tried to make light of their efforts to stay awake while hauling those heavy loads on such tight schedules.

Dave Dudley's 1963 hit, "Six Days On The Road," is one example. The song mentions truck drivers using amphetamines to stay awake ("I'm taking little white pills and my eyes are open wide") and falsifying load limits and log books ("I'm a little overweight and my log book's way behind").

Truck drivers are human and there's no need to demonize them. But ultimately, the fatigue drivers suffer can cause terrible truck accidents with serious and often deadly injuries.

Hours-of-Service Requirements

Because of the importance of keeping truckers well-rested and alert, U.S. law dictates certain "hours-of-service" requirements that prevent commercial truck drivers from being on the road after a certain number of hours. The laws also specify that the driver must have 10 hours of off-duty time before driving again.

Since the 1930s, truckers have been required to account for their time on the road in paper logbooks. In the 1990s, electronic logbooks were introduced, which carry numerous safety advantages.

A bill recently introduced in the Senate would require all truckers to convert to these paperless logs (known as EOBRs, or Electronic On-Board Recorders). This would seem to be a very good thing, at first glance. But the bill also includes dangerous language that could make the nation's highways much less safe.

How Truckers Use Logs

So how is it that electronic logs aid in safety, but the new bill requiring them raises serious safety concerns? To answer this, it's important to understand how logging currently works.

Truckers using paper logs record the time they spend on-duty, driving, sleeping, and off-duty in a logbook, and then send in copies of the log to their trucking company. The company uses the information to pay them based on miles traveled. Because drivers are paid by the mile, it's an open secret that drivers often "fudge" the numbers a little to reflect maximum distance traveled in the shortest time possible. This allows them to claim they had the full 10 hours of rest required by law, when in fact they may have been on duty much longer, and delayed by traffic, equipment problems, or bad weather.

In the late 1990s, one of America's largest trucking companies, Werner Enterprises, developed a paperless log system that works with GPS technology to precisely locate exactly where the truck is at all times. This ensured that all Werner drivers weren't falsifying their records, and allowed their dispatchers to better plan their driver's next assignments, based on their location and availability. Werner worked with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) on the project and became the first company certified to move to a paperless log system.

Today many of the larger trucking companies use EOBR systems. Government research shows these paperless logs are much safer. Companies who have been found in violation of the hours-of-service rules ten percent of the time have a crash rate that is 40 percent higher than the general trucking population. Because of this, the DOT requires companies who have been found in violation more than 10 percent of the time to switch to electronic logs, which are much more difficult for the driver to falsify.

Mandating Electronic Records

Clearly, then, there are well-documented advantages to having only well-rested truckers get behind the wheel. In October, legislation was introduced in the Senate to require all motor carriers to install EOBRs. The bill, called the "Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act," would take effect in about three years.

The problem with the legislation, co-sponsored by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, is that it specifically does not allow the log book information to be used by any party other than the trucking company. Today, when accidents happen on America's highways, the driver's logs are often critical windows into the driver's condition at the time of the accident. Often drivers at fault in a crash have been shown to have falsified their log books. The falsification often comes out after a thorough post-crash examination of their various gas and meal receipts, cell phone records, and other information.

Read more at the link above. t

Georgia 18 Wheeler Wrecks

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A trucker going too fast for roadway conditions in bad weather has always been a serious cause of  wrecks. The question is how do you define “bad weather” and what is the standard for trucker drivers who drive in adverse weather?

 

There is a specific federal regulation – federal motor carrier safety regulation – that addresses this topic.  FMCSR §392.14 says: 

Extreme caution in the operation of a commercial motor vehicle shall be exercised when hazardous conditions, such as those caused by snow, ice, sleet, fog, mist, rain, dust, or smoke, adversely affect visibility or traction. Speed shall be reduced when such conditions exist.  If conditions become sufficiently dangerous, the operation of the commercial motor vehicle shall be discontinued and shall not be resumed until the commercial motor vehicle can be operated safely.  

This FMCSR sets a very high standard of care on professional drivers when operating in anything less than ideal conditions.  This high standard is appropriate because of the dangers posed by trucks in adverse weather conditions.   

The duty to know when it is safe or not is on the trucker, but consider the real world.  Truckers don’t get paid usually unless they are driving.  Some trucking companies put pressure on drivers to get the truck to its destination because the trucking company does not get paid until the freight is delivered.  So, I bet you can see the problem….

Another interesting source on the subject is the CDL manual.  This is the manual all drivers have to study to get their CDL license.  In the CDL Manual, it says:

Wet roads can double stopping distance.  You must drive slower to be able to stop in the same distance as on a dry road.  Reduce speed by abourt one-third (e.g., slow from 55 to 35 mph) on a wet road.  On packed snow, reduce by a half or more.  If the surface is icy, reduce speed to a crawl and stop as soon as you can safely do so. 

It is hard for trucker drivers or trucking safety directors to run from either the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations or the CDL Manual when it comes to bad weather. The starting point is always the FMCSA.

NTSB Says Driver Fatigue at the Root of Fatal Oklahoma Truck Wreck

Image by C.P.Storm via FlickrThe National Transportation Safety Board has determined that driver fatigue stemming from acute sleep loss was to blame in a multi-vehicle crash that claimed 10 lives in Oklahoma last year.

On June 26, 2009, a truck driven by Donald L. Creed, 76, of Willard, Mo., plowed into a line of stopped vehicles on I-44 about 90 miles east of Tulsa, killing 10 vehicle occupants and injuring six others, including himself.

Federal investigators say the driver was suffering from fatigue caused by circadian disruption associated with the driver's work schedule. The NTSB says Creed likely had less than five hours of sleep prior to beginning his work shift at 3 a.m. At the time of the crash, he had been on the road for more than 10 hours. Creed, who suffers from mild sleep apnea, failed to react to slowing and stopped traffic. He never applied brakes or performed any evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with the traffic queue, the NTSB noted in its crash report, released Tuesday.

Among factors cited by NTSB as contributing to the severity of the crash are the truck's high impact speed and its structural incompatibility with passenger vehicles. It was traveling at 69 mph in a 75-mph area.

Investigators identified several major safety issues associated with this crash, and has issued recommendations intended to prevent future occurrences, and to improve future crash investigations.

Among them:

* The need for updated and comprehensive fatigue education materials and fatigue management programs;

* The need for a better understanding of the significance of heavy vehicle collision forces in crashes with smaller vehicles.

* Mandate the installation of electronic and video event recorders on commercial motor vehicles over 10,000 pounds and set performance standards for those devices.

The NTSB also reiterated previous recommendations to develop standards and require deployment of collision warning systems on new commercial vehicles, to require energy-absorbing under-ride protection for trucks, and to develop technologies to reduce fatigue-related accidents. In total, the NTSB issued nine new and six reiterated safety recommendations with this report.

http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp?news_id=71776

Good news on trucking deaths

The number of truck-involved traffic fatalities declined 20 percent in 2009, dropping from 4,245 in 2008 to 3,380 in 2009, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Sept. 9.
The reduction is the lowest level in recorded Department of Transportation history and also shows a 33 percent decrease in fatalities since the generally current hours-of-service regulations first became effective in January 2004. 

http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/2010/9/9/Truck-relatedtrafficfatalitiesdrop20lowestlevelinrecordedDOThistory.aspx

Trucking News in Congress

Image via WikipediaThe Wall Street Journal  has reported a push in congress is coming from 150 companies who want to make trucks 20% heavier. This would make the average truck go from 80,000 pds to 96,000 pounds. The longer heavier trucks would increase the blind areas or "no zones" around the tractor trailer as well as making them harder to stop. While trucks may have increased breaking capacity, passenger cars and pickup trucks wont have any additional structural support added to withstand the impact from these monster trucks. Even if passenger cars were made to withstand these forces, it would be impossible to retrofit the 100's of millions of cars currently on the road.

In addition to consumer safety organizations that uniformly think this is a bad idea, OIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) has stated that the stability of a tractor trailer is "substantially reduced on bigger and heavier trucks." Rollovers are already the leading cause of truck driver deaths, this proposal would make one of the most deadly professions worse. One government official, a truck inspector, was quoted in the WSJ article as stating the idea is "insane."

Safety Group wants Hours of Service Reduced

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Daily driving time under a new Hours of Service rule should be reduced by 27 percent, a document filed by a group of safety advocates reveals.
 

The document, filed by Henry Jasny on behalf of the Truck Safety Coalition, Public Citizen and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, was posted last week on the www.regulations.gov and is one of over 300 documents related to the new rule.

Under the heading Daily Shift Drive Time Maximum, the document reads: “[There should be] No more than eight consecutive hours of driving per shift, based on extensive research findings that show dramatic increase in relative risk of crashes after eight consecutive hours of driving.” 

The document lists basic safety parameters for a new rule:

• 24 hour-circadian schedule

• Lower daily driving and work time limits

• Lower weekly driving and work time maximums

• Increased daily off-duty time, including in sleeper berths

• Increased end-of-week rest time

• Recognition of safety hazards of night-time driving, and

• Universal electronic on-board recorder (EOBR) equipment. 

 

The coalition said it wants to see a maximum of 40 driving hours in a seven-day period and a maximum of 60 hours of work time in a seven-day period.

FMCSA Defends the new Safety Act

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The trucking industry’s top regulator says her agency is moving forward as planned with a long-awaited safety program, even as lawmakers and trucking representatives suggested the agency should focus more on getting the program right than on rolling it out on time.

Noting that a field test in nine states wraps up this month, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Anne Ferro on Tuesday told a House panel that preliminary findings show a 35 percent increase in investigations under Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, meaning more carriers are being reached, and with greater efficiency.
 Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, CSA 2010, is a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) initiative to improve large truck and bus safety and ultimately reduce commercial motor vehicle (CMV)-related crashes, injuries and fatalities. It introduces a new enforcement and compliance model that allows FMCSA and its State partners to contact a larger number of carriers earlier in order to address safety problems before crashes occur. When the program is fully rolled out by the end of 2010, FMCSA will have a new nationwide system for making the roads safer for motor carriers and the public alike
The roll-out for CSA 2010 officially began in April with the carrier data preview, Ferro explained. As previously announced, the actual safety measurement system — in which carriers will be compared to industry peers —will be previewed in late August, followed by full public availability at the end of the year. Remaining components — warning letters, the intervention process and the new fitness determination rule — will continue to the end of fiscal year 2011, she added.


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