13 ms·

Trucks Are Killing Us

213 points by nkzednan 11y ago

thedogeye 11y ago
It's rather disingenuous to compare truck crash fatalities to plane crash fatalities. Almost everything kills people more often than plane crashes.
- apendleton 11y ago
  Yes, so why is air travel so much more heavily regulated for safety than all the other things? The perception is skewed, and people just don't think about motor vehicle collisions as being a big problem, even though they kill tons of people every year (more than firearm homicides, too, for what it's worth). Pointing that out is reasonable.
  - Retra 11y ago
    It's because those people die all at once in a way they can't control or escape. With car accidents, people are perfectly content to believe they are skilled enough drivers to be able to avoid death.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Air travel used to be very dangerous. This created the demand for safety which has continued as a culture within the airline industry to the point that air travel is the safest way to travel.
jsz0 11y ago
> the N.T.S.B. recently reported that they were involved in one in eight of all fatal accidents and about one-quarter of all fatal accidents in work zones Involved or at fault? It seems like these stats are including accidents where trucks did not even contribute to the fatalities but were simply part of the collateral damage.
- douche 11y ago
  There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Moose are involved in around 80% of fatal vehicle-animal collisions in the state of Maine over a five year period[1]. Clearly, moose are a menace, and we need to dramatically invest in moose-diverting safety features on our roads! Except... moose-vehicle collisions were only 15% of all animal-vehicle collisions. Even a cursory look at the physics of what happens in a moose-car collision explains why moose collisions are disproportionately fatal. Look at a moose, standing next to a typical compact-to-midsize car[2]. Now look at what happens when that compact-midsize car hits a moose[3]. The animal's legs get swept out by the hood/bumper of the vehicle, and the animal's heavy body crashes down through the windshield and the relatively flimsy roof of the vehicle, crushing the driver. A similar thing happens with semi trucks. In many cases, the front bumper of a truck, and the rear bumper on the trailer, are higher off the ground than the hood or trunk of a car. So if a truck is involved in a rear-end collision with a car in front, as often as not the truck goes right over the top of the car, crushing the occupants of the car underneath.. Or if the car is rear-ending the truck, the hood and engine mass goes underneath the trailer, but the windshield and roof is sheared off by the steel bumper and trailer deck, along with the upper portions of the car's occupants. I'm not sure you're going to make those physics much safer. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm [2] http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/animal-size-comparison-8.jpg http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/animal-... [3] http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/last-elknor.jpg http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/las...
hyperpape 11y ago
I'm not able to comment on all parts of the article, but one thing stuck out at me: deaths were up from 2009-2013, but so was the volume of freight being shipped: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVar=TRUCK http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVa.... That makes that particular statistic quite dubious. Disclosure: I work for a SAAS company serving the logistics industry, which is why I knew that. I don't really have an opinion about how regulated the industry is. My personal work doesn't deal with that, and I'm pretty ignorant of it. I'm quite willing to believe that this article is accurate at the big picture level.
- jbeales 11y ago
  That's the kind of data I was looking for too! I'm also on the software fringes of trucking, and that was my reaction to the 2009-2013 statistic. Pretty much anything driven by economic activity is up over that period, we should be looking at accidents per kiloton or something like that.
  - hyperpape 11y ago
    Yeah, that would be more informative. But we still need to know about the baseline rates. Trucks are very big, so dangerous to other drivers, and there's a lot of miles driven. On the other hand, there's industry capital to potentially finance safety upgrades, and they're driven by professionals. I'd like to see a more nuanced discussion of what the acceptable risk is, given all those factors.
    - jbeales 11y ago
      I'd like to see a comparison of accidents, (or better, deaths), per million miles of personal vehicles vs. trucks. I'm pretty sure trucks will come out as causing fewer accidents/deaths. I actually did the math for the 2009 - 2013 thing, and truck tonnage increased by 21.75%, so a 17% increase in accidents means that trucks got safer over that time.
      - 11y ago
kylemathews 11y ago
This is why many people believe self-driving trucks will be even more significant than self-driving cars. Especially as we start to commute less as telepresence improves and more jobs can go remote.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  OK, just as long as trucks aren't driven through telepresence. Drone operators in the trucking industry might challenge their military brethren in terms of innocent people killed.
  - rectang 11y ago
    If trucks were operated as drones, wouldn't that make managing hours and handing off from one driver to another much easier?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- stevewepay 11y ago
  I think drones will leapfrog over self-driving trucks. Why even bother having things that drive on roads when you could fly them directly to a warehouse, over hills, forests, rivers, etc?
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I expect ground vehicles win on energy even if you roll in the roads.
    - stevewepay 11y ago
      I don't think energy is the driving factor. There are a lot more technical challenges associated with self-driving cars than self-driving drones. Self-driving cars aren't even fully solved at this point. However, even very cheap hobby drones can accurately fly to specific GPS coordinates. Even most plane flights are auto-piloted and even auto-land, so I believe that drones are a lot closer in terms of implementation than self-driving cars. If there is a business case that determines that drones, while being potentially more energy-intensive, can save a company money due to speed, I believe it will win. For example, imagine Amazon could redistribute inventory between two warehouses with a click of a button and overnight, that sounds like a definite competitive advantage to me.
macNchz 11y ago
Self-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 reality.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry and they already seem to be succeeding at pushing laws through that are bad for the drivers. I would love a system where the trucks get driven to a lot outside of the city where they get set on a automatic course to the equivalent lot at the destination. During transit no person is onboard at all. At the destination lot a human enters and drives it downtown. If the truck goes to some industrial facility outside the city you shouldn't even need the human driver. Also I wish there was done way to go after those congress people who are in essence committing murder.
  - gamerdonkey 11y ago
    This system sounds an awful lot like the freight rail system. That seems like it would be easier to automate, too.
    - bro-stick 11y ago
      Rio Tinto is replacing some of its engineers with ATC.
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    > I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is, and the only ones that make any money will be the one or two companies with the iPhone apps where you push the button to get your truck.
yoo1I 11y ago
> Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014. So the same guy who wrote the piece has for 16 years been directly responsible for the lobbying he is decrying. Anyone know what's going on there?
- closetnerd 11y ago
  Maybe he's realized the inevitability of the situation and decided to jump ship. Can't completely blame him, but makes it difficult to take his opinions seriously.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    In fact, I trust someone with deep experience in a topic more than an outsider.
    - redstripe 11y ago
      Do you mean 1. you trust them to be more knowledgeable or 2. you trust them to be less serving than an outsider? I don't think anyone is arguing with 1.
  - rwallace 11y ago
    Be very careful with that line of thinking. It amounts to 'he's a bad person, so we should punish him by assigning him low status, and part of that is to refuse to take his opinion seriously.' It's instinctively appealing, but it's also an area where human instinct is terribly wrong. A better way to react would be 'it looks like he's done bad things, so when he talks about those bad things, he knows what he's talking about and we should take his opinion very seriously. Whether he should be punished is a separate question, but if so, that punishment should take a form that doesn't cripple our ability to stop the other people who are continuing to do those bad things.'
    - closetnerd 11y ago
      Fair enough. Though again, I do sincerely sympathize with him. If my assumption is true, he did what he did for survival of a form. Fine in my book.
closetnerd 11y ago
It might be unfair assume accidents involving trucks are necessarily due to truck drivers. I think self-driving trucks have many more benefits however other than possibly reducing accidents.
- joesmo 11y ago
  Over 90% of accidents are caused by human error. That doesn't mean it's necessarily the truck driver's fault, as there are other drivers on the road. But if it isn't his fault, it's the fault of another driver. Considering how long truck drivers drive for and in what conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if much of that 90% is actually attributed to the truck drivers themselves instead of other drivers.
  - A_COMPUTER 11y ago
    Consider also though that truck drivers are the most thoroughly and professionally trained and strictly licensed drivers on the roads.
    - joesmo 11y ago
      Considered, however that makes no difference when they've been up 12-36 hours driving. At that point, someone slightly drunk is a better driver.
dougdonohoe 11y ago
Until self driving machines become a reality, there are startups like Maven Machines in Pittsburgh that are tackling the problem of driver fatigue thru innovative use of machine learning. Site: http://mavenmachines.com/ http://mavenmachines.com/
- sillygeese 11y ago
  They might want to pivot into something that's going to be needed in ten years.
  - nevinera 11y ago
    Like flying cars?
  - iMiiTH 11y ago
    Why wouldn't something like this be needed in ten years?
    - striking 11y ago
      Theoretically, self-driving machines will be traversing highways fairly accurately in ten years.
      - mcguire 11y ago
        Theoretically, there is no difference between theory and practice. Practically, however, there is. (Thanks for letting me use one of my favorite quotes!)
ape4 11y ago
Something semi-automated like speedlimit signs that radio out info which the truck receives and enforces seems possible.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  Signs like those could be a godsend to teenagers out for a prank. Steal one from a road with a speed limit of 25, and put it on the interstate where the speed limit's 55, or the opposite, a speed limit of 55 in a 25 zone. I guess you could potentially add geofencing to the signs, but that means tacking up a roadsign becomes a lot more difficult as you suddenly need to spend the time to reprogram signs when you post them.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    Theres no reason they have to be physical signs, just link it to the speed limit database companies like TomTom seem to have for their GPS units and use that. There's always the problem of keeping that up to date, but its no harder than the problems that would have to be solved for physical signs.
- bluedino 11y ago
  Some truck fleets like SWIFT limit the top speeds of their trucks. That's how they got the nickname/abbreviation "sure wish I had a faster truck"
everyone 11y ago
As a cyclist I feel the same way about cars in general, and the stats are similar.
- fnbr 11y ago
  Actually, I don't think the statistics are remotely similar (at least in the UK). In London, for instance, every single cyclist death in 2015 has been due to the cyclist getting crushed by a truck. [1] I don't know about the US, but I suspect the statistics would be similar, at least in cities. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-cycling/11702076/The-truth-about-cycling-safety.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-cycling/1...
  - everyone 11y ago
    Interesting, are they outright deaths tho? As far as I'm aware the most common result of car/bicycle collision is not death but some kind of head trauma for the cyclist, often resulting in brain damage.
    - fnbr 11y ago
      That's a good question, and an aspect that I didn't consider. I'd be interested in hearing the answer if you find it.
- xefer 11y ago
  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.
donatj 11y ago
> About a mile before the crash, the driver ignored work-zone warning signs on the New Jersey Turnpike of likely delays What was expected here, honestly? Should he have made a note in his notebook? > About a half-mile later, the posted speed limit dropped to 45 m.p.h. from the usual 65, which the driver also ignored. Truly more often than not the people who do slow down are in the vast minority and arguably the bigger road hazard.
- lutorm 11y ago
  Highway construction crews must love people like you.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I'm sure it depends on local driving culture and varies from place to place, but there are many stretches of road where local drivers completely ignore posted construction speeds, except for a small percentage who cause dangerous backups and lane changes. Since worker safety is paramount, the best approach is using concrete barriers instead of orange barrels in these high speed zones, not just ignoring the majority of drivers.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I suspect you are a poor driver.
  - donatj 11y ago
    Never had a single accident.
jessaustin 11y ago
The trucking industry... insists that it needs longer work weeks... so that more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says could result in more accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to be buying it. Yeah that makes zero sense. If drivers are driving more, trucks will be on the road more. The actual result of sane work hours would be that more drivers would share trucks and drive in shifts, which is already fairly common. If sharing trucks is somehow impossible, then the industry could buy more trucks, to be parked waiting for their drivers to become available. Neither truck sharing nor additional parked trucks are a danger to the public. It's my understanding that drivers are typically paid by the mile. Therefore, it's difficult to see why trucking companies care about lower speeds or shorter work weeks. If a driver drives less, she'll be paid less. It's almost as if they're saying that there are no more drivers available at current mileage compensation rates. Since this is HN, I won't suggest higher compensation, but perhaps they could investigate the H-1B program?
- A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  You joke, but for years now certain corners have been trying to open it up so so that Mexican trucks/drivers to operate in the USA.
- bsg75 11y ago
  > but Congress seems to be buying it. They are not buying it, but being bought.
machbio 11y ago
The 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
- joesmo 11y ago
  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 dedication, a nationwide rail network would have been possible but the decision to build America as a car/truck country was taken in the late 40's/early 50's and it's too late to reverse that, even at a governmental level. People expect to live in remote areas now and have all the comforts of a city. That's simply not possible with rail at a sane cost. Not only are cars and trucks more flexible, but the transportation expenses can be shared between commercial and personal transportation. People in America generally don't take trains (and don't like them) and outside of small regional areas, passenger trains are mostly a novelty that run sometimes days late. Between the geography and people's attitudes/expectations, there is no room for trains in America and it shows.
  - bro-stick 11y ago
    And Amtrak only exists because the USG didn't want to let all passenger rail services die completely, so it's propped up by tax dollars.
  - spqr0a1 11y ago
    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.
nulagrithom 11y ago
> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days, by eliminating the requirement that drivers take a two-day rest break each week; There was a different problem with the two-day rest break: > Must include two periods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. home terminal time. Because obviously the trucking industry shouldn't be working graveyard. That's the part that was suspended. It screws with scheduling. 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. is arbitrary. http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-h... > discouraged the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from investing in wireless technology designed to improve the monitoring of drivers and their vehicles; Either this is VERY recent news or just misleading. This is happening as far as everyone can tell. The mandate for electronic logging devices in all vehicles should be coming down late September, with a deadline of October 2017. http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-sends-rule-to-white-house-for-approval/ http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-sends... http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-begin-two-year-countdown http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-begin-t...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Shouldn't the trucking industry be working mostly graveyard? I mean, what's the better time for trucks to drive fast and safe if not night, when everyone else is not on the road?
  - wpietri 11y ago
    The best time for trucks is at night, but trucks don't drive. Humans drive trucks, and humans are diurnal animals.
jerrac 11y ago
Driving 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 demand better hours. Insurance companies can require collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc. And if you really believe the government needs to be involved, then it doesn't hurt to try both the government regulation route, and the self-regulation route at the same time. The latter could get implemented faster than the government....
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  > That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion looking at this data. > Drivers can unionize and demand better hours. Insurance companies can require collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc. Many things can happen, but they aren't happening, so...
  - mcguire 11y ago
    Drivers are frequently the ones complaining about the hours-of-service regulations. They get paid by the mile but many of their working hours are non-driving, so more hours on the road is more money. Drivers unionizing (That would be the Teamsters, right?) to demand fewer hours seems roughly as likely as programmers unionizing to demand something better than their 80-hour weeks.
    - jerrac 11y ago
      Would an awareness campaign about the dangers of drowsy driving help? As for unionizing, why mention Teamsters? Just have each companies employees get together and negotiate with management. (Yes, I'm being purposefully naive. Even if this really won't work, it should still be tried first.)
      - 11y ago
discardorama 11y ago
FTA: "The trucking industry, through its chief trade group, the American Trucking Associations, insists that it needs longer work weeks and bigger vehicles so that more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says could result in more accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to be buying it." .... and later: "Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014." Gee, I wonder what's the backstory there?
rcarrigan87 11y ago
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's room to spend on safety is meaningless... Would love to see a more in depth analysis on the issue from a financial perspective.
- BufordTJustice 11y ago
  I second this. The working hours and toll sitting in a tractor like that all day are bad, but if you do things like cut hours for drivers, especially the drivers that aren't owner-operators, and continue them at the same pay, you unfortunately will push a huge contingent of people further out into the margins. I am all for increased safety, and very much think the drivers are on the road way too much, but I fear additional safety or hours cuts will be disproportionately borne by the drivers, who really usually can't afford it anyways. Apparently truck driving is a very common job to work too[1]. [1] - http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
  - BufordTJustice 11y ago
    I guess I'd like to understand why people don't agree. Just to be clear, it's really important that we shore up tractor trailer safety (I've been hit by a class 8 rig twice now, once where the driver was asleep at wheel), but the cost of this really needs to be borne by the companies and not the drivers; as a consequence, you know, in order to get more safety on the road, product prices may go up. I am OK with this though.
- futhey 11y ago
  As someone who's worked inside the industry, the economics of being a trucker push drivers to bend or break the rules to make ends meet. Wages have been depressed over the last three decades and have seen a drop in real wages in many segments of the trucking industry. I saw many drivers keeping multiple log books, skipping or cutting-short rest breaks. Professional drivers can and do operate safely. But with some carriers paying as little as 20 cents per mile, you can do the math and figure out what a typical work-week looks like if you want to eek out a very meager living as a trucker today.
joaq 11y ago
I can't think of many worse jobs than truck driving. Long hours, low pay, threat to lose your job from self-driving cars, high risk... These guys deserve a higher salary and they should start looking for something else to do IMHO.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jbeales 11y ago
I'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/vm1.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/v... [2]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/vm1.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/v... [3]http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081 http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081 [4]http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haulers-granted-exemption-to-30-minute-break-rule/ http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haul...
MiguelVieira 11y ago
The author makes several good points, but never mentions fault. From a 1998 study on car-truck collisions: > the car driver's behavior was more than three times as likely to contribute to the fatal crash than was the truck driver's behavior. In addition, the car driver was solely responsible for 70 percent of the fatal crashes, compared to 16 percent for the truck driver. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/04085/ http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfa...
WalterBright 11y ago
Driving on I5 from Seattle to Portland is now a long line of semis, one after the other. Trucks, even loaded to the legal limit, cause 9,000 times as much fatigue damage to the road as a car (fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight). It's inefficient and environmentally absurd to use trucks that way. Railroad tracks parallel I5. The solution is to pick the container off the semi, put it on a railcar, do the intercity haul on the rails (which are made for heavy loads) with minimal fuel and manpower costs, pick it up and put it on a truck to do the last mile in the destination city. So why isn't this done now? Highways are subsidized by cars (fuel taxes), and railroads are taxed. The incentives are backwards. What I'd do is significantly raise the weight taxes on trucks on the interstates, and use that money to subsidize the rail right-of-way.
- tsuraan 11y ago
  Tiny nit, but from Wikipedia and [0], road damage goes up closer to the fourth power of axle weight. Just further support of your point: rail is absolutely the way to go, especially as it's all in place already. [0] - http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/equivalent-single-axle-load/ http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/equivalent-single...
- jonknee 11y ago
  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.
  - Pinckney 11y ago
    What do you think the weigh stations are for?
    - jonknee 11y ago
      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.
sehugg 11y ago
In the last cross-country trip I took, the interstates were bumpy and the country roads were smooth, no doubt in part due to semi traffic.
xacaxulu 11y ago
But no one wants to give up Amazon Prime & other forms of free or discounted shipping.
microcolonel 11y ago
>More people will be killed in traffic accidents involving large trucks this year than have died in all of the domestic commercial airline crashes over the past 45 years This is such a slimy apples to oranges comparison. Clearly commercial airfare is far safer than ANY road ground transit. After this comparison, I don't feel like reading the rest of the article.
- ORioN63 11y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Maybe the author should have added the percentage of these truck accidents compared to all road accidents.
aswanson 11y ago
I have to drive an interstate on my daily commute. I always wonder why the state troopers, almost without fail, have a semi pulled over on the way in. Also, I have noticed that truck drivers seem to be as dumb/bad as the average driver, and there is no particular need to single them out. People in general are fucking stupid behind the wheel.
golergka 11y ago
Wouldn't it more effective to just help the natural process of these drivers being replaced by AI?
jfhubbard 11y ago
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.
- cs702 11y ago
  Welcome to HN. What are your thoughts on rail as an alternative to trucks?
  - jfhubbard 11y ago
    I am a strong supporter of intermodal; trucks & trains have got to work together. I think that trains are part of the solution to truck driver shortage plus they have lots of other benefits (environmental etc..). I think that there is a great opportunity to make intermodal more efficient and to create more truck/train interface points and to make them more efficient. A lot of work to do. Opportunity for big application of capital AND software.
stevewepay 11y ago
This is why drone technology is very interesting to me. If you have drones flying around that deliver things directly from docks to warehouses, or warehouse to warehouse, not only would it be faster, but potentially safer too (the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population). There's probably a bunch of ways to regulate this as well, such that in the case of disaster, the cost of human life is extremely unlikely.
- hammock 11y ago
  >the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population You mean like railways?
  - stevewepay 11y ago
    Drones have the capability of delivering directly to the final destination, unlike railways. In fact,Amazon could redistribute their inventory between warehouses overnight depending on predicted popularity of various items. Or it allows them to have a gigantic single warehouse with every single item in it, and just worry about distribution centers as opposed to warehouses that hold inventory. Then every hour they could send the packages via drones from their central warehouse to distribution centers where they are immediately put on trucks and sent out.
mytochar 11y ago
> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days. Please tell me that's a typo. PLEASE tell me that's a typo. 82 hours a week is insanity. Driving any vehicle requires a lot of attention, driving a large one requires a LOT more attention. And I just have a strong certainty that, if it's anything like every other industry, it'll be 82 hours a week, every week, no breaks. You want accidents and injuries? Make people drive more than 16 hours a day (5 days a week). Or maybe 13.67 hours a day (6 days a week), or even still 11.71 hours a day (7 days a week). Every week. Wow.
jimmyspencerjr 11y ago
Man, I have always hated trucks, and this is yet another proof of why! But in all seriousness, this is yet another narrative of Congress' rolling back of regulations that prove quite beneficial by way of safety and overall welfare of the nation in favor of vicious profit margins for those warlords of industry. I certainly hope to see restored a body of lawmakers that can get their act together and promote the welfare of a healthy, vibrant nation before the end of my lifetime. We have too many clowns now who are willing to pass laws or not pass laws in downright stupidity, and I'm not sure if it's out of sheer corruption or debased philosophical convictions. For myself, this issue serves as an ideal example of where the government can and should intervene with laws and regulations and oversight in order to promote general safety and welfare, not to mention economic fairness, in preventing the exploitation of the have-nots by the haves. I'm just as weary of government getting too large and intervening in our private lives as anybody else, but who can argue that in cases such as truck driving and highway safety in general, the government cannot easily play a part in saving not only lives but tons of money?

213 points by nkzednan 11y ago

It's rather disingenuous to compare truck crash fatalities to plane crash fatalities. Almost everything kills people more often than plane crashes.

apendleton 11y ago
Yes, so why is air travel so much more heavily regulated for safety than all the other things? The perception is skewed, and people just don't think about motor vehicle collisions as being a big problem, even though they kill tons of people every year (more than firearm homicides, too, for what it's worth). Pointing that out is reasonable.
- Retra 11y ago
  It's because those people die all at once in a way they can't control or escape. With car accidents, people are perfectly content to believe they are skilled enough drivers to be able to avoid death.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Air travel used to be very dangerous. This created the demand for safety which has continued as a culture within the airline industry to the point that air travel is the safest way to travel.

jsz0 11y ago

> the N.T.S.B. recently reported that they were involved in one in eight of all fatal accidents and about one-quarter of all fatal accidents in work zones Involved or at fault? It seems like these stats are including accidents where trucks did not even contribute to the fatalities but were simply part of the collateral damage.

douche 11y ago
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Moose are involved in around 80% of fatal vehicle-animal collisions in the state of Maine over a five year period[1]. Clearly, moose are a menace, and we need to dramatically invest in moose-diverting safety features on our roads! Except... moose-vehicle collisions were only 15% of all animal-vehicle collisions. Even a cursory look at the physics of what happens in a moose-car collision explains why moose collisions are disproportionately fatal. Look at a moose, standing next to a typical compact-to-midsize car[2]. Now look at what happens when that compact-midsize car hits a moose[3]. The animal's legs get swept out by the hood/bumper of the vehicle, and the animal's heavy body crashes down through the windshield and the relatively flimsy roof of the vehicle, crushing the driver. A similar thing happens with semi trucks. In many cases, the front bumper of a truck, and the rear bumper on the trailer, are higher off the ground than the hood or trunk of a car. So if a truck is involved in a rear-end collision with a car in front, as often as not the truck goes right over the top of the car, crushing the occupants of the car underneath.. Or if the car is rear-ending the truck, the hood and engine mass goes underneath the trailer, but the windshield and roof is sheared off by the steel bumper and trailer deck, along with the upper portions of the car's occupants. I'm not sure you're going to make those physics much safer. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm [2] http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/animal-size-comparison-8.jpg http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/animal-... [3] http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/last-elknor.jpg http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/las...

hyperpape 11y ago

I'm not able to comment on all parts of the article, but one thing stuck out at me: deaths were up from 2009-2013, but so was the volume of freight being shipped: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVar=TRUCK http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVa.... That makes that particular statistic quite dubious. Disclosure: I work for a SAAS company serving the logistics industry, which is why I knew that. I don't really have an opinion about how regulated the industry is. My personal work doesn't deal with that, and I'm pretty ignorant of it. I'm quite willing to believe that this article is accurate at the big picture level.

jbeales 11y ago
That's the kind of data I was looking for too! I'm also on the software fringes of trucking, and that was my reaction to the 2009-2013 statistic. Pretty much anything driven by economic activity is up over that period, we should be looking at accidents per kiloton or something like that.
- hyperpape 11y ago
  Yeah, that would be more informative. But we still need to know about the baseline rates. Trucks are very big, so dangerous to other drivers, and there's a lot of miles driven. On the other hand, there's industry capital to potentially finance safety upgrades, and they're driven by professionals. I'd like to see a more nuanced discussion of what the acceptable risk is, given all those factors.
  - jbeales 11y ago
    I'd like to see a comparison of accidents, (or better, deaths), per million miles of personal vehicles vs. trucks. I'm pretty sure trucks will come out as causing fewer accidents/deaths. I actually did the math for the 2009 - 2013 thing, and truck tonnage increased by 21.75%, so a 17% increase in accidents means that trucks got safer over that time.
    - 11y ago

kylemathews 11y ago

This is why many people believe self-driving trucks will be even more significant than self-driving cars. Especially as we start to commute less as telepresence improves and more jobs can go remote.

jessaustin 11y ago
OK, just as long as trucks aren't driven through telepresence. Drone operators in the trucking industry might challenge their military brethren in terms of innocent people killed.
- rectang 11y ago
  If trucks were operated as drones, wouldn't that make managing hours and handing off from one driver to another much easier?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
stevewepay 11y ago
I think drones will leapfrog over self-driving trucks. Why even bother having things that drive on roads when you could fly them directly to a warehouse, over hills, forests, rivers, etc?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  I expect ground vehicles win on energy even if you roll in the roads.
  - stevewepay 11y ago
    I don't think energy is the driving factor. There are a lot more technical challenges associated with self-driving cars than self-driving drones. Self-driving cars aren't even fully solved at this point. However, even very cheap hobby drones can accurately fly to specific GPS coordinates. Even most plane flights are auto-piloted and even auto-land, so I believe that drones are a lot closer in terms of implementation than self-driving cars. If there is a business case that determines that drones, while being potentially more energy-intensive, can save a company money due to speed, I believe it will win. For example, imagine Amazon could redistribute inventory between two warehouses with a click of a button and overnight, that sounds like a definite competitive advantage to me.

macNchz 11y ago

Self-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 reality.

ajmurmann 11y ago
I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry and they already seem to be succeeding at pushing laws through that are bad for the drivers. I would love a system where the trucks get driven to a lot outside of the city where they get set on a automatic course to the equivalent lot at the destination. During transit no person is onboard at all. At the destination lot a human enters and drives it downtown. If the truck goes to some industrial facility outside the city you shouldn't even need the human driver. Also I wish there was done way to go after those congress people who are in essence committing murder.
- gamerdonkey 11y ago
  This system sounds an awful lot like the freight rail system. That seems like it would be easier to automate, too.
  - bro-stick 11y ago
    Rio Tinto is replacing some of its engineers with ATC.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is, and the only ones that make any money will be the one or two companies with the iPhone apps where you push the button to get your truck.

yoo1I 11y ago

> Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014. So the same guy who wrote the piece has for 16 years been directly responsible for the lobbying he is decrying. Anyone know what's going on there?

closetnerd 11y ago
Maybe he's realized the inevitability of the situation and decided to jump ship. Can't completely blame him, but makes it difficult to take his opinions seriously.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  In fact, I trust someone with deep experience in a topic more than an outsider.
  - redstripe 11y ago
    Do you mean 1. you trust them to be more knowledgeable or 2. you trust them to be less serving than an outsider? I don't think anyone is arguing with 1.
- rwallace 11y ago
  Be very careful with that line of thinking. It amounts to 'he's a bad person, so we should punish him by assigning him low status, and part of that is to refuse to take his opinion seriously.' It's instinctively appealing, but it's also an area where human instinct is terribly wrong. A better way to react would be 'it looks like he's done bad things, so when he talks about those bad things, he knows what he's talking about and we should take his opinion very seriously. Whether he should be punished is a separate question, but if so, that punishment should take a form that doesn't cripple our ability to stop the other people who are continuing to do those bad things.'
  - closetnerd 11y ago
    Fair enough. Though again, I do sincerely sympathize with him. If my assumption is true, he did what he did for survival of a form. Fine in my book.

closetnerd 11y ago

It might be unfair assume accidents involving trucks are necessarily due to truck drivers. I think self-driving trucks have many more benefits however other than possibly reducing accidents.

joesmo 11y ago
Over 90% of accidents are caused by human error. That doesn't mean it's necessarily the truck driver's fault, as there are other drivers on the road. But if it isn't his fault, it's the fault of another driver. Considering how long truck drivers drive for and in what conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if much of that 90% is actually attributed to the truck drivers themselves instead of other drivers.
- A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  Consider also though that truck drivers are the most thoroughly and professionally trained and strictly licensed drivers on the roads.
  - joesmo 11y ago
    Considered, however that makes no difference when they've been up 12-36 hours driving. At that point, someone slightly drunk is a better driver.

dougdonohoe 11y ago

Until self driving machines become a reality, there are startups like Maven Machines in Pittsburgh that are tackling the problem of driver fatigue thru innovative use of machine learning. Site: http://mavenmachines.com/ http://mavenmachines.com/

sillygeese 11y ago
They might want to pivot into something that's going to be needed in ten years.
- nevinera 11y ago
  Like flying cars?
- iMiiTH 11y ago
  Why wouldn't something like this be needed in ten years?
  - striking 11y ago
    Theoretically, self-driving machines will be traversing highways fairly accurately in ten years.
    - mcguire 11y ago
      Theoretically, there is no difference between theory and practice. Practically, however, there is. (Thanks for letting me use one of my favorite quotes!)

ape4 11y ago

Something semi-automated like speedlimit signs that radio out info which the truck receives and enforces seems possible.

Sanddancer 11y ago
Signs like those could be a godsend to teenagers out for a prank. Steal one from a road with a speed limit of 25, and put it on the interstate where the speed limit's 55, or the opposite, a speed limit of 55 in a 25 zone. I guess you could potentially add geofencing to the signs, but that means tacking up a roadsign becomes a lot more difficult as you suddenly need to spend the time to reprogram signs when you post them.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jon-wood 11y ago
  Theres no reason they have to be physical signs, just link it to the speed limit database companies like TomTom seem to have for their GPS units and use that. There's always the problem of keeping that up to date, but its no harder than the problems that would have to be solved for physical signs.
bluedino 11y ago
Some truck fleets like SWIFT limit the top speeds of their trucks. That's how they got the nickname/abbreviation "sure wish I had a faster truck"

everyone 11y ago

As a cyclist I feel the same way about cars in general, and the stats are similar.

fnbr 11y ago
Actually, I don't think the statistics are remotely similar (at least in the UK). In London, for instance, every single cyclist death in 2015 has been due to the cyclist getting crushed by a truck. [1] I don't know about the US, but I suspect the statistics would be similar, at least in cities. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-cycling/11702076/The-truth-about-cycling-safety.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-cycling/1...
- everyone 11y ago
  Interesting, are they outright deaths tho? As far as I'm aware the most common result of car/bicycle collision is not death but some kind of head trauma for the cyclist, often resulting in brain damage.
  - fnbr 11y ago
    That's a good question, and an aspect that I didn't consider. I'd be interested in hearing the answer if you find it.
xefer 11y ago
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.

donatj 11y ago

> About a mile before the crash, the driver ignored work-zone warning signs on the New Jersey Turnpike of likely delays What was expected here, honestly? Should he have made a note in his notebook? > About a half-mile later, the posted speed limit dropped to 45 m.p.h. from the usual 65, which the driver also ignored. Truly more often than not the people who do slow down are in the vast minority and arguably the bigger road hazard.

lutorm 11y ago
Highway construction crews must love people like you.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I'm sure it depends on local driving culture and varies from place to place, but there are many stretches of road where local drivers completely ignore posted construction speeds, except for a small percentage who cause dangerous backups and lane changes. Since worker safety is paramount, the best approach is using concrete barriers instead of orange barrels in these high speed zones, not just ignoring the majority of drivers.
jessaustin 11y ago
I suspect you are a poor driver.
- donatj 11y ago
  Never had a single accident.

jessaustin 11y ago

The trucking industry... insists that it needs longer work weeks... so that more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says could result in more accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to be buying it. Yeah that makes zero sense. If drivers are driving more, trucks will be on the road more. The actual result of sane work hours would be that more drivers would share trucks and drive in shifts, which is already fairly common. If sharing trucks is somehow impossible, then the industry could buy more trucks, to be parked waiting for their drivers to become available. Neither truck sharing nor additional parked trucks are a danger to the public. It's my understanding that drivers are typically paid by the mile. Therefore, it's difficult to see why trucking companies care about lower speeds or shorter work weeks. If a driver drives less, she'll be paid less. It's almost as if they're saying that there are no more drivers available at current mileage compensation rates. Since this is HN, I won't suggest higher compensation, but perhaps they could investigate the H-1B program?

A_COMPUTER 11y ago
You joke, but for years now certain corners have been trying to open it up so so that Mexican trucks/drivers to operate in the USA.
bsg75 11y ago
> but Congress seems to be buying it. They are not buying it, but being bought.

machbio 11y ago

The 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

joesmo 11y ago
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 dedication, a nationwide rail network would have been possible but the decision to build America as a car/truck country was taken in the late 40's/early 50's and it's too late to reverse that, even at a governmental level. People expect to live in remote areas now and have all the comforts of a city. That's simply not possible with rail at a sane cost. Not only are cars and trucks more flexible, but the transportation expenses can be shared between commercial and personal transportation. People in America generally don't take trains (and don't like them) and outside of small regional areas, passenger trains are mostly a novelty that run sometimes days late. Between the geography and people's attitudes/expectations, there is no room for trains in America and it shows.
- bro-stick 11y ago
  And Amtrak only exists because the USG didn't want to let all passenger rail services die completely, so it's propped up by tax dollars.
- spqr0a1 11y ago
  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.

nulagrithom 11y ago

> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days, by eliminating the requirement that drivers take a two-day rest break each week; There was a different problem with the two-day rest break: > Must include two periods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. home terminal time. Because obviously the trucking industry shouldn't be working graveyard. That's the part that was suspended. It screws with scheduling. 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. is arbitrary. http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-h... > discouraged the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from investing in wireless technology designed to improve the monitoring of drivers and their vehicles; Either this is VERY recent news or just misleading. This is happening as far as everyone can tell. The mandate for electronic logging devices in all vehicles should be coming down late September, with a deadline of October 2017. http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-sends-rule-to-white-house-for-approval/ http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-sends... http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-begin-two-year-countdown http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-begin-t...

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Shouldn't the trucking industry be working mostly graveyard? I mean, what's the better time for trucks to drive fast and safe if not night, when everyone else is not on the road?
- wpietri 11y ago
  The best time for trucks is at night, but trucks don't drive. Humans drive trucks, and humans are diurnal animals.

jerrac 11y ago

Driving 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 demand better hours. Insurance companies can require collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc. And if you really believe the government needs to be involved, then it doesn't hurt to try both the government regulation route, and the self-regulation route at the same time. The latter could get implemented faster than the government....

copsarebastards 11y ago
> That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything. I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion looking at this data. > Drivers can unionize and demand better hours. Insurance companies can require collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc. Many things can happen, but they aren't happening, so...
- mcguire 11y ago
  Drivers are frequently the ones complaining about the hours-of-service regulations. They get paid by the mile but many of their working hours are non-driving, so more hours on the road is more money. Drivers unionizing (That would be the Teamsters, right?) to demand fewer hours seems roughly as likely as programmers unionizing to demand something better than their 80-hour weeks.
  - jerrac 11y ago
    Would an awareness campaign about the dangers of drowsy driving help? As for unionizing, why mention Teamsters? Just have each companies employees get together and negotiate with management. (Yes, I'm being purposefully naive. Even if this really won't work, it should still be tried first.)
    - 11y ago

discardorama 11y ago

FTA: "The trucking industry, through its chief trade group, the American Trucking Associations, insists that it needs longer work weeks and bigger vehicles so that more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says could result in more accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to be buying it." .... and later: "Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014." Gee, I wonder what's the backstory there?

rcarrigan87 11y ago

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's room to spend on safety is meaningless... Would love to see a more in depth analysis on the issue from a financial perspective.

BufordTJustice 11y ago
I second this. The working hours and toll sitting in a tractor like that all day are bad, but if you do things like cut hours for drivers, especially the drivers that aren't owner-operators, and continue them at the same pay, you unfortunately will push a huge contingent of people further out into the margins. I am all for increased safety, and very much think the drivers are on the road way too much, but I fear additional safety or hours cuts will be disproportionately borne by the drivers, who really usually can't afford it anyways. Apparently truck driving is a very common job to work too[1]. [1] - http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
- BufordTJustice 11y ago
  I guess I'd like to understand why people don't agree. Just to be clear, it's really important that we shore up tractor trailer safety (I've been hit by a class 8 rig twice now, once where the driver was asleep at wheel), but the cost of this really needs to be borne by the companies and not the drivers; as a consequence, you know, in order to get more safety on the road, product prices may go up. I am OK with this though.
futhey 11y ago
As someone who's worked inside the industry, the economics of being a trucker push drivers to bend or break the rules to make ends meet. Wages have been depressed over the last three decades and have seen a drop in real wages in many segments of the trucking industry. I saw many drivers keeping multiple log books, skipping or cutting-short rest breaks. Professional drivers can and do operate safely. But with some carriers paying as little as 20 cents per mile, you can do the math and figure out what a typical work-week looks like if you want to eek out a very meager living as a trucker today.

joaq 11y ago

I can't think of many worse jobs than truck driving. Long hours, low pay, threat to lose your job from self-driving cars, high risk... These guys deserve a higher salary and they should start looking for something else to do IMHO.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jbeales 11y ago

I'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/vm1.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/v... [2]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/vm1.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/v... [3]http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081 http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081 [4]http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haulers-granted-exemption-to-30-minute-break-rule/ http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haul...

MiguelVieira 11y ago

The author makes several good points, but never mentions fault. From a 1998 study on car-truck collisions: > the car driver's behavior was more than three times as likely to contribute to the fatal crash than was the truck driver's behavior. In addition, the car driver was solely responsible for 70 percent of the fatal crashes, compared to 16 percent for the truck driver. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/04085/ http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfa...

WalterBright 11y ago

Driving on I5 from Seattle to Portland is now a long line of semis, one after the other. Trucks, even loaded to the legal limit, cause 9,000 times as much fatigue damage to the road as a car (fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight). It's inefficient and environmentally absurd to use trucks that way. Railroad tracks parallel I5. The solution is to pick the container off the semi, put it on a railcar, do the intercity haul on the rails (which are made for heavy loads) with minimal fuel and manpower costs, pick it up and put it on a truck to do the last mile in the destination city. So why isn't this done now? Highways are subsidized by cars (fuel taxes), and railroads are taxed. The incentives are backwards. What I'd do is significantly raise the weight taxes on trucks on the interstates, and use that money to subsidize the rail right-of-way.

tsuraan 11y ago
Tiny nit, but from Wikipedia and [0], road damage goes up closer to the fourth power of axle weight. Just further support of your point: rail is absolutely the way to go, especially as it's all in place already. [0] - http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/equivalent-single-axle-load/ http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/equivalent-single...
jonknee 11y ago
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.
- Pinckney 11y ago
  What do you think the weigh stations are for?
  - jonknee 11y ago
    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.

sehugg 11y ago

In the last cross-country trip I took, the interstates were bumpy and the country roads were smooth, no doubt in part due to semi traffic.

xacaxulu 11y ago

But no one wants to give up Amazon Prime & other forms of free or discounted shipping.

microcolonel 11y ago

>More people will be killed in traffic accidents involving large trucks this year than have died in all of the domestic commercial airline crashes over the past 45 years This is such a slimy apples to oranges comparison. Clearly commercial airfare is far safer than ANY road ground transit. After this comparison, I don't feel like reading the rest of the article.

ORioN63 11y ago
Yeah, I agree. Maybe the author should have added the percentage of these truck accidents compared to all road accidents.

aswanson 11y ago

I have to drive an interstate on my daily commute. I always wonder why the state troopers, almost without fail, have a semi pulled over on the way in. Also, I have noticed that truck drivers seem to be as dumb/bad as the average driver, and there is no particular need to single them out. People in general are fucking stupid behind the wheel.

golergka 11y ago

Wouldn't it more effective to just help the natural process of these drivers being replaced by AI?

jfhubbard 11y ago

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.

cs702 11y ago
Welcome to HN. What are your thoughts on rail as an alternative to trucks?
- jfhubbard 11y ago
  I am a strong supporter of intermodal; trucks & trains have got to work together. I think that trains are part of the solution to truck driver shortage plus they have lots of other benefits (environmental etc..). I think that there is a great opportunity to make intermodal more efficient and to create more truck/train interface points and to make them more efficient. A lot of work to do. Opportunity for big application of capital AND software.

stevewepay 11y ago

This is why drone technology is very interesting to me. If you have drones flying around that deliver things directly from docks to warehouses, or warehouse to warehouse, not only would it be faster, but potentially safer too (the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population). There's probably a bunch of ways to regulate this as well, such that in the case of disaster, the cost of human life is extremely unlikely.

hammock 11y ago
>the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population You mean like railways?
- stevewepay 11y ago
  Drones have the capability of delivering directly to the final destination, unlike railways. In fact,Amazon could redistribute their inventory between warehouses overnight depending on predicted popularity of various items. Or it allows them to have a gigantic single warehouse with every single item in it, and just worry about distribution centers as opposed to warehouses that hold inventory. Then every hour they could send the packages via drones from their central warehouse to distribution centers where they are immediately put on trucks and sent out.

mytochar 11y ago

> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days. Please tell me that's a typo. PLEASE tell me that's a typo. 82 hours a week is insanity. Driving any vehicle requires a lot of attention, driving a large one requires a LOT more attention. And I just have a strong certainty that, if it's anything like every other industry, it'll be 82 hours a week, every week, no breaks. You want accidents and injuries? Make people drive more than 16 hours a day (5 days a week). Or maybe 13.67 hours a day (6 days a week), or even still 11.71 hours a day (7 days a week). Every week. Wow.

jimmyspencerjr 11y ago

Man, I have always hated trucks, and this is yet another proof of why! But in all seriousness, this is yet another narrative of Congress' rolling back of regulations that prove quite beneficial by way of safety and overall welfare of the nation in favor of vicious profit margins for those warlords of industry. I certainly hope to see restored a body of lawmakers that can get their act together and promote the welfare of a healthy, vibrant nation before the end of my lifetime. We have too many clowns now who are willing to pass laws or not pass laws in downright stupidity, and I'm not sure if it's out of sheer corruption or debased philosophical convictions. For myself, this issue serves as an ideal example of where the government can and should intervene with laws and regulations and oversight in order to promote general safety and welfare, not to mention economic fairness, in preventing the exploitation of the have-nots by the haves. I'm just as weary of government getting too large and intervening in our private lives as anybody else, but who can argue that in cases such as truck driving and highway safety in general, the government cannot easily play a part in saving not only lives but tons of money?