* New Jersey - Serious issue: Fatigued truck drivers, focus on economics, not electronics
Princeton,NJ,USA -Los Angeles Times/Opinion, by Karen Levy -17 July 2014: ... Truckers don't work without sleep for dangerously long stretches because it's fun. Let's hope the discussion doesn't stop there. The nation's trucking system needs to be reformed, and the changes must address root economic causes underlying a range of unsafe practices... Truckers don't work without sleep for dangerously long stretches because they have to earn a living. The market demands a pace of work that many drivers say is impossible to meet if they're "driving legal" ... In the face of rising consumer demand for overnight shipments and for fresh produce trucked from the opposite coast, shippers have upped the pressure both to move goods quickly and to keep costs low. Since many truckers are paid by the mile, they're incentivized to stay on the road as much as possible. (As truckers are fond of saying, "If the wheel ain't turnin', you ain't earnin'!") ... One thing that makes this possible is that truck drivers are explicitly exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act, so they aren't legally entitled to overtime pay or other protections designed to prevent their labor from being exploited... Economist Michael Belzer has compared trucks to 'sweatshops on wheels' because of the low rates of pay, long working hours and unsafe conditions... In an attempt to increase truckers' compliance with the hours-of-service rules, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — the federal agency in charge of regulating the trucking industry — is very likely to soon mandate that all truckers install electronic logging devices... These electronic systems will help guard against some unsafe practices, but they won't address many of the biggest sources of trucker fatigue. Truckers will tell you that long stretches of "detention time" — the (typically unpaid) hours that a trucker must wait at a shipper's terminal to be loaded or unloaded — are what really exhaust them, and force them to be on duty for far more hours than are legally permitted... Most truckers are also unpaid for the many hours they spend completing mandatory inspections, dealing with repairs, filling out required paperwork, checking the security of their loads and many other important tasks that make up their long workdays. None of these activities will be addressed by electronic logs, and drivers will most likely continue to squeeze them into their required "rest" periods, as they have been doing for decades... The road is an unpredictable workplace. As anyone who has driven on the highway knows, road travel is fraught with contingencies, from weather to congestion to accidents, all of which can make a trip take longer than anticipated. Add to that the other pressures to keep driving — economic incentive, employer pressure, the dearth of safe places to park and rest, and the desire to get home after days or weeks away — and you begin to get a sense for why truckers drive for as long as they do... But electronic monitoring is an incomplete solution to a serious public safety problem. If we want safer highways and fewer accidents, we must also attend to the economic realities that drive truckers to push their limits...Labels: truckers' fatigue
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