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Trucks Are Killing Us
61–70 of 248 posts
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#62Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk. The occasional 14hr drive isn't horrible, but if you do that several days in a row, you're going to be really tired. So limiting the hours per day a truck driver drives seems like a good idea. As does "shift" driving. Collision avoidance tech also seems like a good idea. That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. Drivers can unionize and d…
Have you actually talked with any truck drivers? Are you sure they want it?
Most deaths are not truck drivers, but drivers of cars who enter in collisions with trucks. And truck drivers would like to make more money in shorter periods of time and not spend this time resting someplace away from home.
I hope autopilots will replace truck drivers soon.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#63Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk. The occasional 14hr drive isn't horrible, but if you do that several days in a row, you're going to be really tired. So limiting the hours per day a truck driver drives seems like a good idea. As does "shift" driving. Collision avoidance tech also seems like a good idea. That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. Drivers can unionize and d…
Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk.
Perhaps the same ethical framework that was used to make DUI popularly unacceptable can be used for drowsy driving: To drive in this condition is to indulge one's self at others' peril.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#64I'm all for the safety arguments being made by the author but he does paint the trucking industry as this huge money making business when that really isn't the case. Trucking is a very low margin business. These guys live and die based on controlling costs. It's an industry where innovation is very hard because you really need to justify every dollar spent on R&D. Quoting $700B total industry revenue and saying there…
Uh, there is money to spend on safety. It is the money that the customers of the trucking companies pay. When every company's costs increase, they will all pass those costs on to their customers.
Of course, the truck manufacturers would be the ones who would have to spend beforehand on research to satisfy the various requirement. Moreover, the article mentions that much of the technology already exists.
Edit: As the other poster notes, reducing hours while maintain the same ultra-low-pay is a recipe for disaster too. It seems reason to demand that increased safety would involve more driver professionalization, which would require higher pay, which again would have to be pushed to the customers.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#65Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk. The occasional 14hr drive isn't horrible, but if you do that several days in a row, you're going to be really tired. So limiting the hours per day a truck driver drives seems like a good idea. As does "shift" driving. Collision avoidance tech also seems like a good idea. That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. Drivers can unionize and d…
They are trying self-regulation, right now, and the article is arguing that it's not working well enough. They've been self-regulating as long as we've had trucks.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#66Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk. The occasional 14hr drive isn't horrible, but if you do that several days in a row, you're going to be really tired. So limiting the hours per day a truck driver drives seems like a good idea. As does "shift" driving. Collision avoidance tech also seems like a good idea. That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. Drivers can unionize and d…
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Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#67Self-driving trucks seem to have such great promise to improve the safety and efficiency of the trucking industry and our highways in general. Even if they're only self-driving during the long haul sections and human drivers take over for local deliveries it would make a huge difference. Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a…
I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US. Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised safety? Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in…
>Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in return for capital to make a living.
I certainly agree that we're going to need to rework our concepts of work and income to fit a more automated world, but I think that the automation will have to come first, to get people to realize that something needs to be done to make our society more balanced. Artificially limiting the rollout of self driving trucks for the sake of preserving jobs will just cost in lives lost to accidents, and delay what seems to be an inevitable outcome (that trucks will drive themselves and truck driving jobs will start to disappear).
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#68I'm not convinced this guy isn't on some vendetta. He only quotes total numbers, not accidents per thousand miles / deaths per thousand miles.
If I understand the these DOT numbers[1,2] properly the number of truck miles from 2009 to 2013 has dropped, which would be especially bad if the number of accidents has ridden, but that doesn't jibe with a) the 2008 recession ending and b) increased truck sales over the past 5 years[3]. The trucking industry publications I've been reading are generally in agreement that trucking demand exceeds capacity, and that demand has been steadily increasing since 2008.
He's right that some of the safety regulations have changed recently, and to the layman it appears that they have changed to be less safe. For example, as of this past June, drivers hauling oversize/overweight loads no longer have to take a 30-minute break that was formerly required. However, part of that reasoning was that it can be more dangerous for oversize trucks to be parked, especially at night, than it is for them to continue driving straight through[4].
The 30-minute break exemption has been granted in several other situations as well, for example when hauling HazMat that requires the driver to "attend," or supervise the vehicle even when it's stopped, since this is defined as an on-duty activity the driver would either have to eliminate the break, or stop supervising the load, so he/she would have to break a law no matter what, so it was decided that the 30-minute break would become optional.
About on-truck technology to make the road safer, it's a good idea, but it needs to work right every time. I've spoken to my business partner about it, (he's the one who's been through the whole trucking industry from driving right up to management), and in his other job, where he manages a trucking company, they've had demonstration units with all kinds of collision warnings, lane departure warnings, blind-spot warnings, and so on. They found that the alarms went off way too often when there was no problem - to the point where none of the drivers wanted to take these brand-new demonstration trucks out on a run. And the article's posterboy crash - the Tracy Morgan accident, was a new truck with those bells & whistles installed. The problem there was the driver's commute time to get to work.
Finally, the article reads as if the trucking industry wants to be unsafe. This is simply not true. There are jerks that drive trucks, just like there are jerks that drive 4-wheelers, but there's a culture of safety in trucking that really impresses me. Safety records for both drivers and companies, including inspection results, are tracked by the US government. If a driver's record is too bad no company will take them on, and if a carrier's record is too bad it will be prohibited from operating. Most of the "trucking industry" is truck drivers, and a truck driver's top priority is arriving alive and uninjured.
[1]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/v... [2]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/v... [3]http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081 [4]http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haul...
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#69As a cyclist I feel the same way about cars in general, and the stats are similar.
I agree most especially in the city as a cyclist and a pedestrian. The more I've thought about it ", the more absurd cars, at least as currently configured, are as a means for transportation in high density zones.
As a stepping stone towards automated vehicles, I wish there were a way to electronically put a car into "city mode" when traveling within city limits. This "city mode" would give motor vehicles the speed, power and acceleration profile of basically a golf cart. 15mph/25kph max speed - which I think is the effective travel speed anyway given how cars tend to race up to the next red light. It would force cars into a more equal footing with other modes of transportation on the public travel ways. And this could be done with existing technology. Granted, it will never happen but the city would be s much more relaxed place.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#70The Solution is the Train - that I don't understand why has not dominated in US, though it being a big industry in earlier part of the 20th Century
The cost of running rail to supply all the routes currently served by truck now (and generally in the last 50-60 years) is so high that it's infeasible. The less populated and poor the destination, the higher the costs (and most remote areas are both sparsely populated and poor). I think you're seriously underestimating the vastness of the US and the remoteness of the majority of it. Sure, given enough investment and…
Ah, but road transport isn't really shared between commercial and personal transportation. Road maintenance is in large part funded by fuel tax. Fuel use is roughly proportional to vehicle weight at low speed, or frontal area at high speed. While wear to the road is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight.
So trucking is heavily subsidised by smaller cars. If the costs created by trucking were internalized, the market share in the shipping industry would likely shift considerably toward rail transport.