for the most part, things really have to go bad for a team to need a restart every week. if things go well as far as loading and unloading, a team can run alot of miles without the need for a restart. hours fall off every day.
That is true with an important exception; teams who do security loads where the customer is paying to have one team member awake with the freight at all times. Diane and I do not often run out of hours in a week but it does happen from time to time when we are on security loads.
Time logged as on-duty-not-driving counts against the available driving hours you have. Run a security load where you spend a night or weekend waiting to deliver and your driving hours can get eaten up. Run a couple of those in a week and you will need to take time off to reset.
That's never been a problem for us. If we are out of hours in a week, we are happy to take a break anyway. Whether it would be a 34 or 44 hour break under the new rules is of little concern to us.
it will be a while before any of this is in force, but there will be a change. that is the one thing we all can be sure of. we need to be reigned in because crash statistics are up and its all the fault of trucks.
That's the myth. The fact is crash statistics are down and in about 70 percent of the car/truck crashes that happen, the car driver is at fault, and only a small percentage of all truck accidents are attributed to genuine driver fatigue.
I say genuine because the way violations are reported, driver fatigue includes something like a driver who has been on the job for two hours after a weekend break but got caught without a log book in his truck because he forgot it at home. He is not tired, he forgot his log book but the violation gets reported as fatigue.
A major reform would be to change the language such that paperwork violations are called paperwork violations and fatigue violations are called fatigue violations. But trumping up the number of so-called fatigue violations serves certain players in the debate and I suspect that they were clever enough and present enough behind the scenes to influence the language when the rule language that would be later discussed was being drafted by some fourth-level assistant to a sub-committee.
The 70 percent statistic suggests that the biggest risk there is to trucks on the road is four-wheelers. If you really want to reduce the truck crash hazard, it can be done by reducing the number of four-wheelers on the road. This actually happened in the Great Recession. People drove less. Four-wheeler miles were significantly reduced, and the number of truck crashes fell.
what i dont understand is why some of the large truck organizations have not pushed back in the same manner. lets go after regulation on all the motoring public that travel in the name of work. maybe if some stink is brought about, at least some of the public would see it from our point of view. that is what needs to happen. the motoring public needs to see it from our point of view with a little help from regulation.
It happens in a limited fashion but not enough to make a big difference. That is because, as you correctly stated, the motoring public is mostly blind to what truckers see. For every voting trucker, there are thousands of voting four-wheelers. The politics simply are not there to give truckers the voice four-wheelers have. A politician might agree that it would be a great idea to put speed limiters on cars but a politician who wants to get re-elected would know better than to introduce a bill that mandates speed limiters for cars.
And when a law is passed to improve the safe-driving practices of four wheelers, they are ignored. How long do you have to sit behind the wheel to see a speeding four-wheeler or texting driver in a state where texting while driving is illegal?
Because OOIDA does a very good job voicing our interests in Washington, I recently made a $500 contribution to OOIDA's PAC and litigation funds.
OOIDA has a Washington office that works behind the scenes to counter the anti-trucking activists and organizations that are also there. OOIDA regularly initiates and/or participates in law suits that benefit us as well.
A recent and very much appreciated example is OOIDA's suit against the state of Minnesota's ludicrous driver fatigue questionnaire that officers were using to put drivers out of service. That practice has stopped because of OOIDA's suit and we await a court ruling, hopefully to ban such questionnaires forever.
OOIDA does good work on the regulatory and legal front. I support that work by writing checks and I urge others to do the same.
Wishful thinking is not enough. Supporting organizations that push back against zealous anti-trucking advocates may also not be enough but it does help and it has a demonstrable positive impact.
If you are not inclined to contribute hundreds or thousands of dollars to the OOIDA PAC and litigation funds, you can still help in an important way by simply becoming an OOIDA member. By adding yourself and perhaps your spouse to the membership roles, you give OOIDA the ability to say in Washington that it repesents that many more people.
Such numbers are important when it comes to being heard in Washington. (Example: If the NRA represented 1,000 gun owners, the only response NRA people would get in Washington would be a polite brush off.) If you are not an OOIDA member, I urge you to
join today. The fine magazine alone is worth the membership fee. By joining, you will help those who are doing good work to help owner-operators and other truckers.
