Trucks Are Killing Us • Hacker News Board

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#141

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #124

nickff wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logs are kept, but the posts above are making the point that drivers should be required to sleep a certain number of hours of the past 24 hours. Logs do not help you with this, unless you are using a sleep tracking device.

If your legal standard is "no more than 10 hours driving in any continuous 24 hour period, and at least 9 hours of continuous rest period" you don't know for /sure/ that the driver will sleep in the 14 hours they're not driving, but why wouldn't he/she?

I guess it's because they might be shifting to a new schedule and it wasn't feasible to change sleep patterns? So if you get in at 00:00 one day, sleep until 08:00. Then you don't get a new assignment until 02:00 the next day day, you will have the necessary gap, but not have had any real way to have slept the right time. You would have needed to force yourself to sleep in the afternoon/evening, and, even with drugs, that is a hard thing to pull off.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#142

Post by hyperpape » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #109

rcthompson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think of a rule that said you could only continue driving if you have slept for at least 6 of the past 24 hours? (I'm not sure what the exact numbers should be, but you get the idea.)

even if you enforce that it's still not gonna help with the fact that as much as people would like it circadian rhythms don't adjust instantly. Ever changing shifts are the bane of a good existence, working nights all the time is fine, working nights a week every 2-3 or worse, 2-3 days a week, is going to cause a lot of problems for everybody. From my perspective I would totally gamify cars/trucks for everybody, ever…

Sounds foolproof. The first time someone can't start their car when they need it because of a glitch in your software/inaccuracies in the testing method, you are in serious trouble.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#143

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:18 PM UTC

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #48

I'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…

[deleted]

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#144

Post by URSpider94 » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

op00to wrote: post #126

Aloha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be resoundingly ignored, and its utterly unenforceable. Right now, if you're a driver and you decline a load, it may be days to get another one at times, especially if you're stuck in a city with a ton of inbound freight, but not too much outbound freight - so you take what you can, push your endurance, and hope you can get far enough out of town that they wont try to swap it on you.

... So obviously the solution is to keep killing motorists so you can get a paycheck. Gotcha.

Drivers are fallible human beings. With families. And car payments. And mortgages. Many of them own their own trucks, and have to make payments on those as well. I'm pretty damned sure that nobody goes out on the road thinking that they're going to kill someone, while destroying their livelihood and injuring themselves in the process.

If you knew that the difference between working today and not being able to work for another several days was to put in a few extra hours, are you telling me you'd never make that same decision yourself?

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#145

Post by mcguire » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #86

rcthompson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think of a rule that said you could only continue driving if you have slept for at least 6 of the past 24 hours? (I'm not sure what the exact numbers should be, but you get the idea.)

It would be resoundingly ignored, and its utterly unenforceable. Right now, if you're a driver and you decline a load, it may be days to get another one at times, especially if you're stuck in a city with a ton of inbound freight, but not too much outbound freight - so you take what you can, push your endurance, and hope you can get far enough out of town that they wont try to swap it on you.

"It would be resoundingly ignored, and its utterly unenforceable."

My understanding is that currently, a driver has essentially three states: on-duty, driving; on-duty, not driving; and off-duty. Further, as I understand it, strictness about maintaining logs and electronic log books (which drivers like, judging by the ads I see for it) have made fudging duty hours much less of a problem now than in the good ol' amphetamine days.

You can force a driver to go off duty, but you can't force him to sleep. And the driver hours-of-service regulations are insane.[1]

[1] http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-h...

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#146

Post by jonknee » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

Pinckney wrote: post #140

jonknee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A toll for semis on the highway could be a good start. It would at least let them pay for the damage they cause. Weigh stations are already in place which should make tolling pretty simple to enact and it could even be variable based on the size of the truck / weight of the load.

What do you think the weigh stations are for?

Enforcement of rules, inspections, paperwork, etc. Fuel is taxed, not a toll for the road usage. In the OPs example where there is a rail line literally next to the interstate it would make sense to charge a large toll. For other highways that don't have parallel railways it would not make sense to charge a hefty freight toll.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#147

Post by mcguire » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #124

nickff wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logs are kept, but the posts above are making the point that drivers should be required to sleep a certain number of hours of the past 24 hours. Logs do not help you with this, unless you are using a sleep tracking device.

If your legal standard is "no more than 10 hours driving in any continuous 24 hour period, and at least 9 hours of continuous rest period" you don't know for /sure/ that the driver will sleep in the 14 hours they're not driving, but why wouldn't he/she?

I believe the industry successfully fought off a simple hours-of-service schedule like that several years ago. Instead, you have: http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-h....

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#148

Post by jfhubbard » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

I'm the CEO of SpeedGauge - a safety and performance company that uses data from 3rd party GPS trackers to monitor and coach hundreds of thousands of commercial vehicles in the US. We use standard GPS tracking data to understand and improve driver speeding behavior - clearly the cause of the crash that critically injured Tracy Morgan and killed James McNair.

From our experience with fleet customers we can see that there is a split in the US trucking industry between those companies that eagerly spend to improve safety and fuel economy and those that think they can't afford it and therefore fight regulation and mandates.

Many companies are way ahead of the regulators when it comes to safety and fuel saving technology and practices. Just look at which companies voluntarily govern their vehicles to a fuel efficient max speed (say 62 mph) vs those that let trucks roll at higher inefficient speeds. Or, look at those companies that have invested in telematics to get improvements in safety, operations and fuel economy and those that resist any such mandate.

Police and inspection based monitoring system (ie. current US DOT CSA regime) allow effective comparison of risk patterns at the aggregate level for large fleets but statistically are invalid at the single driver level because of the paucity of data (even risky drivers don't get in accidents very often). Fleets need more granular data to evaluate individual drivers. Sadly in this incident, it was Walmart, who maintains one of the highest aggregate safety ratings in the industry, that failed to identify the granulal events that put their driver, and the driving public at risk.

Transportation is a tight margin business and solutions need to work within the capital and operational constraints of the market and the reality is that smaller and independent players often don't have the capital to invest (nor do many telematic solution providers direct efforts to micro-fleets). Our customers' experience is that safest drivers are the most profitable drivers (and the best paid). While I am a strong supporter of fair government regulation, I remain hopeful that technology can in fact lead that way by pointing out that safe operations are profitable operations.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#149

Post by mcguire » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #131

Aloha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article bothered me because of the presumption that the author made about hours of service, and as a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep schedule - so while you can be compl…

An Uber for truck shipping, I See A Great Need.

As in, something that doesn't have an hours-of-service regulation?

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#150

Post by taivare » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 9:33 PM UTC

Pinckney wrote: post #140

jonknee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A toll for semis on the highway could be a good start. It would at least let them pay for the damage they cause. Weigh stations are already in place which should make tolling pretty simple to enact and it could even be variable based on the size of the truck / weight of the load.

What do you think the weigh stations are for?

In my region , I have been told the top drivers pulling Heavy loads . . steel coils 28,000 lbs, if overloaded are capable of using a maneuver . . when entering the scales of perching a back wheel on the curb . . reducing weigh in's . I was told these drivers are recruited , for these tax cheating skills , and highly paid.