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>Driving too much is not just at the cost of time. It is at the cost of life, drivers and whoever he crashes into. Do you really think a middle aged truck driv

>Driving too much is not just at the cost of time. It is at the cost of life, drivers and whoever he crashes into. Do you really think a middle aged truck driver is (was) holding the steering wheel for 16hr straight as a matter of routine business? Of course not. Tropes like that make for easy online virtue points but that wasn't the reality for the overwhelming majority of people who were cooking the books. These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing. What they sacrificed was their outside of work life. Nobody is working those kinds of hours and having a life outside work. You would have physical complications from that in very short order. And occasionally someone would go overboard, drive 36hr straight and cause a crash. And because that's an easy thing for people who have zero knowledge of industry incentives and feedback loops to get their panties in a knot over they made it "extra illegal" because you can't make being an idiot illegal. And so now the industry cuts far less tasteful corners and pays everyone crap and you have drivers who have barely memorized the pre-trip, have barely and hours behind the wheel, can't read english, and who choose a different career in short order and are likewise treated as disposable. So the net effect is more or less a wash but a handful of people get to get big raises and some politicians can pat themselves on the back for "solving" logbook fraud.

piva00 5y ago
> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing. What they sacrificed was their outside of work life. Nobody is working those kinds of hours and having a life outside work. You would have physical complications from that in very short order. And how does this justify as something safe? When I worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just mentally exhausting work I definitely went downhill after a while. Safely behind a computer. If you are driving a 20-40 ton truck while being as tired as I was, doing stupid mistakes as I was, you are definitely endangering others' lives. I really don't understand your counterpoint here.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >When I worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just mentally exhausting work I definitely went downhill after a while. >If you are driving a 20-40 ton truck while being as tired as I was, doing stupid mistakes as I was, you are definitely endangering others' lives. I assume you drove home after your exhausting day, which according to you is endangering others' lives, so what's different when you do it?
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Why would you assume that they drive home? Regardless, there would hypothetically be massive differences such as distance and size of vehicle. Both are bad.
  - Frondo 5y ago
    Not the OP but guessing the difference is that he wasn't driving a loaded tractor trailer at freeway speeds to get home from work.
  - Fogest 5y ago
    I worked 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher and was mentally exhausted after those shifts. I had an hour drive home each of those shifts. There were definitely many shifts I wasn't driving home safe. Luckily my hour drive was like that because I was "temporarily relocated". The employer gave us the option to go book a hotel stay so I had some days where I was too tired to drive home safely and would stay in the hotel 5 minutes away. And that's just me in a small little sedan, not an overloaded 18 wheeler. For context, I also do have a commercial drivers license. Driving for 60-80 hours in a week is just not safe. There is no way to try and justify that it is. The only people doing that many hours of driving a week "safely" were probably high on cocaine. Cocaine usage was quite prevalent in the trucking industry because of this huge push to have drivers fudging logs and overdriving. There are tons of studies out there that prove that driving while tired can be just as bad as driving drunk, if not worse depending on how deprived of sleep you are and how long you've been going.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Here's the current rules. They seem pretty reasonable https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-1361484 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-136... For example, drivers who transport property in the same state are subject to state regulations but not federal regulations. Whereas drivers who deliver materials from state to state must comply with federal regulations. Among the regulations: A reset occurs when a driver has had marked 34 consecutive hours off duty. The workweek starts after the last legal reset. For example, if you begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, then the workweek continues until 1 a.m. the following Monday. Each duty period must begin with at least 10 hours off-duty. Drivers may work no more than 60 hours on-duty over seven consecutive days or 70 hours over eight days. And they need to maintain a driver's log for seven days and eight days after, respectively. Drivers may be on duty for up to 14 hours following 10 hours off duty, but they are limited to 11 hours of driving time. Drivers must take a mandatory 30-minute break by their eighth hour of coming on duty. The 14-hour duty period may not be extended with off-duty time for breaks, meals, fuel stops, etc. I would say the only issue is on your required break time, you sit around doing nothing and not get paid for it. If you are at home that is fine, if you are a long haul trucker, you're stuck at a truck stop waiting for time to complete. As a side note, as others have mentioned, truck drivers have been getting paid less and less over the years, and that's not accounting for inflation; plus it's rough on relationships, so it's no wonder there is a shortage.
bluGill 5y ago
Most of them didn't really have an opportunity for a life so you can't blame them. What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time? Legally you can only stop at a truck stop. If you wake up at 6:30, spend an hour on breakfast, then drive for 4 hours, with a 10 minute break every hour (30 minutes) , then stop for an hour for lunch (at 11:30), then drive for another 4 hours with half hour brakes before an hour for supper (now 6:00), then two more hours, it is 9:00. For a normal 8 hour sleep night you now have an 1.5 hours to kill in a middle of nowhere area with nothing to do. Most people don't need that much time for breaks. You can easily see how someone would want to cheat for more pay - there isn't much else to do. Now for health our hypothetical trucker above should get out and move, but face it, most people aren't getting their exercise.
- derefr 5y ago
  Perhaps dystopian to say, but this sounds like a perfect use-case for 5G-streamed VR MMO games. Have an hour to kill in the middle of nowhere? Jack in!
  - spockz 5y ago
    Or read a book. Watch a movie. Write a book. There are many things to do. Also on the mandated Sunday stop I see many drivers maintain their trucks and cabs. Life doesn’t have to be boring.
- Animats 5y ago
  > What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time? Railroads have had to deal with that since the Hours of Service Act in 1907. After 12 hours, train crews and dispatchers are "dead on the law", and have to stop the train. The railroad tries hard to prevent that. They don't schedule people for the full 12 hours. There are crew change points. Railroads put train crews up in motels. Ferry crews around in crew vans. Once in a while a train does end up stopped for that reason, usually because some other problem tied up traffic. Interestingly, while there's theoretical work on the Truck Driver Scheduling Problem [1], there doesn't seem to be someone offering this as a service. That might be a startup opportunity for someone. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896316312046 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631...
jfrunyon 5y ago
> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing. Hi, IT guy here. When I'm sleep-deprived, there is absolutely 0 chance of it causing some family to die. It's very different.
cmeacham98 5y ago
"We can't stop $badThing because they might do $evenWorseThing !!" No thanks on that analysis, maybe trucking companies should stop unsafe driving practices and stop exploiting their workers.
watwut 5y ago
> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing The difference is that IT guy won't crash truck into another car when overworked. Truckers did. And it was not because they were idiots. It was, because humans are affected by tiredness. And it did not happened because of some larger goal, but because it is cheaper to pressure trucker to drive too much.

piva00 5y ago

> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing. What they sacrificed was their outside of work life. Nobody is working those kinds of hours and having a life outside work. You would have physical complications from that in very short order. And how does this justify as something safe? When I worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just mentally exhausting work I definitely went downhill after a while. Safely behind a computer. If you are driving a 20-40 ton truck while being as tired as I was, doing stupid mistakes as I was, you are definitely endangering others' lives. I really don't understand your counterpoint here.

Clubber 5y ago
>When I worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just mentally exhausting work I definitely went downhill after a while. >If you are driving a 20-40 ton truck while being as tired as I was, doing stupid mistakes as I was, you are definitely endangering others' lives. I assume you drove home after your exhausting day, which according to you is endangering others' lives, so what's different when you do it?
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Why would you assume that they drive home? Regardless, there would hypothetically be massive differences such as distance and size of vehicle. Both are bad.
- Frondo 5y ago
  Not the OP but guessing the difference is that he wasn't driving a loaded tractor trailer at freeway speeds to get home from work.
- Fogest 5y ago
  I worked 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher and was mentally exhausted after those shifts. I had an hour drive home each of those shifts. There were definitely many shifts I wasn't driving home safe. Luckily my hour drive was like that because I was "temporarily relocated". The employer gave us the option to go book a hotel stay so I had some days where I was too tired to drive home safely and would stay in the hotel 5 minutes away. And that's just me in a small little sedan, not an overloaded 18 wheeler. For context, I also do have a commercial drivers license. Driving for 60-80 hours in a week is just not safe. There is no way to try and justify that it is. The only people doing that many hours of driving a week "safely" were probably high on cocaine. Cocaine usage was quite prevalent in the trucking industry because of this huge push to have drivers fudging logs and overdriving. There are tons of studies out there that prove that driving while tired can be just as bad as driving drunk, if not worse depending on how deprived of sleep you are and how long you've been going.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Here's the current rules. They seem pretty reasonable https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-1361484 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-136... For example, drivers who transport property in the same state are subject to state regulations but not federal regulations. Whereas drivers who deliver materials from state to state must comply with federal regulations. Among the regulations: A reset occurs when a driver has had marked 34 consecutive hours off duty. The workweek starts after the last legal reset. For example, if you begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, then the workweek continues until 1 a.m. the following Monday. Each duty period must begin with at least 10 hours off-duty. Drivers may work no more than 60 hours on-duty over seven consecutive days or 70 hours over eight days. And they need to maintain a driver's log for seven days and eight days after, respectively. Drivers may be on duty for up to 14 hours following 10 hours off duty, but they are limited to 11 hours of driving time. Drivers must take a mandatory 30-minute break by their eighth hour of coming on duty. The 14-hour duty period may not be extended with off-duty time for breaks, meals, fuel stops, etc. I would say the only issue is on your required break time, you sit around doing nothing and not get paid for it. If you are at home that is fine, if you are a long haul trucker, you're stuck at a truck stop waiting for time to complete. As a side note, as others have mentioned, truck drivers have been getting paid less and less over the years, and that's not accounting for inflation; plus it's rough on relationships, so it's no wonder there is a shortage.

bluGill 5y ago

Most of them didn't really have an opportunity for a life so you can't blame them. What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time? Legally you can only stop at a truck stop. If you wake up at 6:30, spend an hour on breakfast, then drive for 4 hours, with a 10 minute break every hour (30 minutes) , then stop for an hour for lunch (at 11:30), then drive for another 4 hours with half hour brakes before an hour for supper (now 6:00), then two more hours, it is 9:00. For a normal 8 hour sleep night you now have an 1.5 hours to kill in a middle of nowhere area with nothing to do. Most people don't need that much time for breaks. You can easily see how someone would want to cheat for more pay - there isn't much else to do. Now for health our hypothetical trucker above should get out and move, but face it, most people aren't getting their exercise.

derefr 5y ago
Perhaps dystopian to say, but this sounds like a perfect use-case for 5G-streamed VR MMO games. Have an hour to kill in the middle of nowhere? Jack in!
- spockz 5y ago
  Or read a book. Watch a movie. Write a book. There are many things to do. Also on the mandated Sunday stop I see many drivers maintain their trucks and cabs. Life doesn’t have to be boring.
Animats 5y ago
> What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time? Railroads have had to deal with that since the Hours of Service Act in 1907. After 12 hours, train crews and dispatchers are "dead on the law", and have to stop the train. The railroad tries hard to prevent that. They don't schedule people for the full 12 hours. There are crew change points. Railroads put train crews up in motels. Ferry crews around in crew vans. Once in a while a train does end up stopped for that reason, usually because some other problem tied up traffic. Interestingly, while there's theoretical work on the Truck Driver Scheduling Problem [1], there doesn't seem to be someone offering this as a service. That might be a startup opportunity for someone. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896316312046 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631...

jfrunyon 5y ago

> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing. Hi, IT guy here. When I'm sleep-deprived, there is absolutely 0 chance of it causing some family to die. It's very different.

cmeacham98 5y ago

"We can't stop $badThing because they might do $evenWorseThing !!" No thanks on that analysis, maybe trucking companies should stop unsafe driving practices and stop exploiting their workers.

watwut 5y ago

> These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy doing the same thing The difference is that IT guy won't crash truck into another car when overworked. Truckers did. And it was not because they were idiots. It was, because humans are affected by tiredness. And it did not happened because of some larger goal, but because it is cheaper to pressure trucker to drive too much.