127. Trucking – ELD Studies Find That They Do More Harm Than Good - Julia's Trucking Cafe

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are listening to Julia's Trucking Cafe News Hour. Hey everybody,
Welcome to Julia's Trucking Cafe. How is everybody doing. As always,
I have lots of news to get to, so let's
get started. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me

(00:34):
on another episode of Julia's truck At Cafe truck At
News Hour podcast. Boy, what a mouthful. Sorry for the
glare of my glasses, but it's kind of dark here
in the truck, so I get a lot of glare
off my laptop. But what I wanted to stop at
a moment and tell you is that the episodes are
going to be a little bit shorter. I'm trying to
do shorter episodes maybe more often. Also, the Rookie Roundtable

(00:58):
sometimes I'm going to have an apple, So sometimes you're just
gonna have to tune in and find out when I
think about something I want to talk about on the
Rookie round Table. By the time I get the show together,
then I end up forgetting what I wanted to say.
So in the future, I have a bunch pre recorded
and then all I have to do is select which
one I want to put at the end of the video.

(01:20):
So let's get to the news. Thank you so much
for your patience and helping me get motivation to keep
going with the show. In our first story, a trucker

(01:49):
is struck by lightning and could only think that he's
not gonna be able to do this anymore. This incident
happened in Newton, Texas while Dale Dean, a log hauler,
was going about his work hauling logs. He was working

(02:12):
tul lumber during a storm when he got stuck in
the mud. He says, he was hooking his truck up
to a skitter Now, for those of you that aren't
familiar with logging in the logging industry, a skitterer is
like a big type of tractor with like a big
round looking clamp on the end of it that takes
all of the logs and pulls them out of the

(02:33):
woods and kind of drags him out and then another
machine puts him up in a pile and then loads
the trucks. So he was hooking up to a skitterer
to help pull him out of the mud when lightning
struck his rig while he was inside the rig or
I believe he was trying to hook up the current
of electricity that traveled through the metal chain and did to

(02:56):
his body, knocked Dean three feet into a near ditch.
He says, I quote, it was really a real scary
moment for me. All that flashed through my mind was, man,
you're not going to be able to do this anymore.
And he kind of tears up when he talks about it.
Dean's coworker then called their supervisor, while Dean himself called

(03:17):
his wife for help getting to the hospital Beverly. And
then she says, let me call you right back. And
I quickly looked at my coworker. I said, oh my goodness,
I'm going I'm about to die, and she just said
she's gonna call me back, he jokes. When Dean walked
into the hospital, he says, doctors were stunned they saw

(03:40):
the remnants of the lightning that went through his body.
He said that amount of voltage should have caused him
to have a heart attack. Quote. I guess the first
thing I didn't know was that if he was a
dead or alives. So proud to see him standing up
when I got there, said Dean supervisor. On his way home,
his wife says the hospital, she reached over and just

(04:02):
grabbed his hand. She thought, if it would have been different,
I would have been coming home by myself. I'm just
grateful that I was able to reach over and grab
his hand. So very lucky to be alive. I have
never gotten struck by lightning out on the road, thank goodness.
But I hate lightning storms. Not to take away from

(04:28):
this story whatsoever, but being a victim of Kurricane Katrina
all them years ago, there was a lot of lightning
and I just get really, really skittish at lightning storms.
In our next story, a trucker's cause of death is
pending after he was found dead in his cab. Trucker

(04:51):
was parked at a Loew's parking lot in North Dirkson
in Springfield, Illinois. Preliminary findings from an autopsy show no
evidence of injury or trauma. At the time of writing
of this article, the driver's cause of death is still
pending toxicology reports. Trucker's identity was not released pending notification

(05:16):
of next of kin. The death is still under investigation
by the Springfield Police Department. Rest and Peace. Driver, Your
load is done and we have this for you. Condolences
to all of this driver's family. Now you know how

(05:40):
mobile homes go, you know, haul in ass down the road,
and some of these houses and everything, half of houses
and stuff hall in ass down the road. But did
you ever see one fall off the chassis. This happened
in Nitro, West Virginia. The accident happened on westbound and
State sixty four. Mobile homes slid off the trailer and

(06:03):
into a ditch. Luckily it was a ditch and nobody
got hurt. And this looks like it's like sixteen wide.
Traffic remained flowing in the area, but apparently it wasn't
really you know, attached to the chassis very well. So

(06:25):
I'm like, you know, that could have been a real fiasco.
And in our next story, guess what The ELD mandate
that we've been forced to use all these years only
increased trucker's death and fatal crashes, multiple studies show and

(06:50):
find well, who the fuck it? Multiple studies showed that
ELD Electric Logging Device mandate has not decreased deaths or
truck crashes in the five years since it's been implemented.
According to recent studies, The FMCSA Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration,

(07:15):
initially estimated that the enforcement back in twenty seventeen, we
result in avoidance of one and forty four crashes annually
and fewer than five hundred and sixty two injuries per
year excuse me, and a savings of twenty six lives

(07:37):
now five years later. The data doesn't support those statistics
and those estimations. The FMCSA data shows that crashes involving
large trucks increased by eleven percent between twenty seventeen and
twenty nineteen, just before the pandemic hit. The only thing

(08:00):
that helped decline it was the pandemic and people having
this stay of butts home. Data for twenty twenty one,
of course, isn't available yet. The Bureau of Labor statistics
show that fatality rates among truckers themselves has increased since
the ELED mandate began, from twenty three point six per

(08:21):
one hundred thousand to twenty eight point eight per one
hundred thousand from twenty thirteen and twenty twenty one, respectively.
Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and HTSA
also shows an increase in injuries and deaths from truck
related crashes since the implementation of the ELDS, Although these

(08:46):
increases were not quite as dramatic. I have to put
that in there. At the very least, data does not
support the FMCSA's claims that the eleds would make roadways safer,
and instead confirms the fears of truck drive that the
lack of flexibility the elds create makes driving semi trucks
even more dangerous. Quote if you're thirty minutes from home

(09:11):
and you go over your eleven hours, you must shut
down or else you get an out of service violation,
says Brian Pappy, a trucker who left the industry after
thirteen years there. Quote there's a much less flexible window
for truckers to get from point A to point B,
said Karen Leavia, professor of Cornell University, who has steady

(09:34):
the effects of data tracking on the truck in industry.
Quote they used to say I'll get there in about
eleven hours. Now they really only have eleven hours. As
a result, they tend to drive faster. They maybe don't
stop when they feel like they should because they know
they have to get from point A to point B.
In other words, we're being rushed all the time. Hurry

(09:55):
up and get there, Hurry up and get there. The
load's not gonna wait. And shippers and briefitte now going
to digress a little bit. Now, shippers and receivers aren't
as flexible on appointment times. If you're late, they only
give you an hour an hour Walmart, and then they
reschedule you like the following week. So it's not as

(10:17):
flexible as it was. Back to the article, Levi goes
on to agree with general consensus of truck drivers, the
regulations do not address or change the actual underlying issues
in the trucking industry. Quote an eld. Does it change
the pay structure of trucking, which is just being paid
by the mile, Levi says, So we police truckers harder,

(10:39):
but we don't change the root causes of fatigue or
the reasons why they're over they're overworking end quote quote.
If you talk to truckers about why they got into
this line of work, much of what is appealing to
them about this job is that it's very independent and autonomous.
Levi continues. It's not a job where you're compared to
your co workers or where there's someone look over your shoulder,

(11:01):
or at least that was the thinking, and nowadays that's
changed a lot. In November of twenty twenty two, CEO
of OIDA wrote an open letter to the FMCSA stating
that quote, there was never sufficient research indicating the mandate
would improve highway safety, and the agency still lacks data

(11:22):
demonstrating any positive safety results since its full implementation, which
gives good rise to our point where the eled mandate
should be outlawed. Just a woman's perspective and up next,
a trucker is hospitalized after a flying chunk of ice

(11:47):
from another truck obliterated his windshield. This incident was reported
around January twenty seventh by Ontario Police. Police say that
a truck traveling on a Highway four to one near
Cortis Road was struck by an ice missile that came
off of another truck a chunk of ice. The flying

(12:09):
ice shattered the windshield on the driver's side. Terry. Police
say that the truck driver suffered injuries that required hospitalization.
They did not provide information on whether they located the
truck that the ice came from or whether that truck
driver would face charges yeah for not cleaning off his vehicle.

(12:34):
And in Georgia in this story, Department of Public Safety
calls out a truck driver for using quote NASCAR slicks.
Do you think they're slick enough? You have no traction
at all? Talk about getting your money's worth out of
a tire? Good grief. The Georgia Department of Public Safety

(12:57):
r DPS, for short, took to social media to point
out a commercial vehicle tire violation recently discovered by an officer.
They said, NASCAR slects are still not regulated by the FMCSA,
so please do not use them on your commercial vehicle.
The not funny part is that the driver thought it

(13:18):
was still a good tire as long as it's still
held air. Really, really, this driver thought the slick tire
with no tread on it was still a good tire
because it's still held air. Social media, the users expressed
both concerned and incredulity about the tire featured in the post.
Someone definitely got their money's worth all of that tire,

(13:40):
such as I said, seriously, glad you all took that
truck off of the road, said another. That is crazy.
Not a maypop, more like wind. Will it pop exactly?
And in this story, a motorist some truck attempted to pass.

(14:04):
All right, sorry, let me get back up. A motorist
attempted pass to pass a semi truck ends in a
fatal crash with another rig a second rig. This happened
in Barren County, Michigan. Witnesses say that a SCUV was
heading east on US twelve behind a semi truck, where
the motorists decided to pass the rig. As the suv

(14:26):
attempted to pass, a motorists lost control and veered off
the left side of the roadway going too fast. Motorists
then regained control of the car, but was soon struck
head on by a westbound semi which pushed the car
off of the roadway and into an embankment. The semi
truck then rolled on to its side and came to
a rest on top of the suv. According to the

(14:49):
local news, Police arrived to find the rig on its
side with the SCUV underneath it. The motorist was pronounced
dead at the scene. There you go. Sometimes the lead
foot can lead you to killing yourself. The truck driver

(15:10):
that laid over his red was not heard in the incident.
Investigators say that the red and slushy roads at the
time of the crash likely contributed to the wreck. No
further information was released, and this you might find funny.

(15:30):
FMCSA asked the public for comment on how to regulate
self driving trucks. Oh I made a public comment keep
them off the Highway. The Federal Motor Carrier from CSA
is asking the public for comments on how commercial motor
vehicle equipped where automated driving systems should be regulated. They

(15:56):
issued a Supplemental Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking PRM requesting
input on how to establish a regulatory framework for ADS
automated driving systems equipped commercial vehicles. The agency previously sought
public comment on the regulation of automated driving system equipped

(16:19):
trucks in May of twenty nineteen. So here's their speel.
Automated driving system equipped commercial vehicles have the potential measurable
safety benefits and crashes involving human error excuse me IS.

(16:40):
Equipped commercial vehicles, however, present operational characteristics and challenges that
may introduce new and complex safety risks that need to
be monitored and may require FMCSA to modify existing and
or adopt new regulatory standards. ADS developers are actively engaged
in the development, testing, and limited deployment. Limited deployment of

(17:02):
ADS Systems and Trucks, said the FMCSA. They're interested in
only three areas of focus regarding the self driving, whether
motor carriers should be required to notify that they're operating
without a human driver in the cab, how to regulate
remote truck drivers, and how to handle pre tripped roadside

(17:22):
inspectry requirements for ADS equipped vehicles. So I suggest they
get a droid to go out in and act like
they're doing aer roadside insfaction. I shouldn't really laugh at
that that might be coming. So this is a pretty
long article here. I will leave a link to this

(17:45):
on the website at juliastruck acafe dot com on the
homepage that if you would like to look at this
article and read further exactly what that gonna bore you
with all their details are talking about, you could go
ahead and read this article for yourself. So, once again,

(18:08):
thank you so much for continuing to listen to the show.
I greatly appreciate it, and you all have a blessed
day and keep the shiny side up. I greatly greatly

(18:29):
appreciate all of you who tune in each week to
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(18:50):
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(19:10):
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(19:55):
thank you so much for listening and until next time

(20:20):
you have been listening to Julia's Truck, a Cafe Truck
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127. Trucking – ELD Studies Find That They Do More Harm Than Good

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