* New York - The appalling rollback of truck safety provisions in the DRIVE Act
-- A battle is brewing over the Senate transportation bill’s approach to truck safety. Though large trucks are involved in crashes that kill nearly 4,000 people a year — a number that has grown by 17 percent over the past five years — the DRIVE Act actually rolls back what few protections exist... The bill would allow longer and heavier tractor-trailers... Also cut down on mandated rest periods for truckers, a long-simmering question. The Senate bill would allow truckers to work 82 hours a week with less rest... Perhaps most appalling, the DRIVE Act would let teenagers drive commercial trucks... The bill would allow 18-year-olds to drive commercial trucks, despite the elevated crash risk of teenage drivers... Safety groups and newspaper editorial pages are slamming these proposals as concessions to the trucking lobby that completely disregard public safety. Even a retired executive from the American Trucking Associations, an industry lobbying group, was recently moved to speak out against the changes, noting in the New York Times that while heavy trucks account for less than 10 percent of total miles traveled, they are involved in one in eight of all fatal crashes and about one-quarter of all fatal crashes in work zones...
(Cartoon from Host Madison) -- New York, NY, USA - Street Blog, by Tanya Snyder - August 28, 2015
* New York - Underage, unlicensed truck driver reveals what really happens on the roads
-- American Trucking Associations executive Howard Abramson recently made a case in the New York Times for higher safety standards for trucks. It’s not hard to understand why: Large trucks were involved in at least 327,000 traffic accidents in 2013, killing almost 4,000 and injuring 95,000... Size matters. According to the Utah Department of Transportation, “a fully loaded tractor-trailer weighing 80,000 pounds traveling under ideal conditions at a speed of 65 miles per hour will take 525 feet to stop (almost the length of two football fields)” ... Long hours are a constant point of contention between trucking companies (and owner-operators), who want to maximize profit, and regulators, who want to increase safety. In implementing a new policy in 2013, which reduced truckers’ maximum average work week from 82 hours a week to 70 hours, the U.S. Department of Transportation stated: “Working long daily and weekly hours on a continuing basis is associated with chronic fatigue, a high risk of crashes, and a number of serious chronic health conditions in drivers” ... I didn’t know a lot of drivers when I was on the road. But those I met seemed to take ridiculous hours for granted. Drivers are required to keep log books, which they show to police or state authorities at weigh stations, documenting their hours. But these were often exercises in narrative fiction. Drivers doctored the numbers or kept two sets of books. Meanwhile, to stay awake on long hauls, or through a series of them, amphetamines were a common resort, as was marijuana, often to take the edge off the amphetamines... I skipped that stuff, but I rarely drove without fatigue. Never a good sleeper, I worked all day, stayed awake riding shotgun during my boss’s time behind the wheel, then drove myself when he got tired and wanted to sleep. Since I’d never learned to drive properly, I only knew how to shift through the lower register and higher register of the truck’s 13 gears. The middle gears, roughly six through 10, remained a mystery. Rather than pull over, my boss vacated the driver’s seat, and I moved in, as we rolled down the highway at high speed. After that, fear of the destructive power of the rig, and a cherished music tape, kept me going through the night. It didn’t seem insane at the time... Truckers have family obligations, hobbies, money troubles, love affairs. There’s no way to guarantee that they’re getting sleep when they’re not on the job, or that they’re alert and paying attention when they are. The best we can hope is that drivers are mindful of the enormous responsibility they carry along with their freight. And it probably helps if they have a license...
(Photo: Truck stop) -- New York, NY, USA - Bloomberg/Claims Journal, by Francis Wilkinson - August 31, 2015Labels: safety roads, safety trucks
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