> There's a bunch of rules governing how many hours truckers can work. True! > And those regulations are mostly followed. Very false, at least as of 5 years

> There's a bunch of rules governing how many hours truckers can work. True! > And those regulations are mostly followed. Very false, at least as of 5 years ago. I worked with trucker biometric data which for a large company which runs trucks all over North America. The company itself keeps its hands clean: they required drivers to keep strict manual logs and have strict rules about compliance with regulation. But at every step of the way, the incentives are for drivers to lie in these logs. Particularly, per-mile pay incentivizes driving a lot of miles at times when there's less traffic on the road (night). If your truck isn't moving, you aren't getting paid, and drivers want to get back to their families and hobbies, so they minimize time spent sleeping in their truck in a random location. Additionally, missed deadlines can significantly impact your pay, and deadlines are set at levels which cut very close to regulation, so that any delays force drivers to break regulation to meet the deadline. Biometric data shows flagrant violations of regulation, which we can't share with anyone (including the company), because it's medical data protected under HIPAA. The manual logs are corroborated by an electronic black box on each truck, but these logs aren't checked unless something goes wrong, at which point the company can use to show the trucker was in violation of their stated policies to reduce liability. I've only seen data from one company (which I cannot name due to non-disclosure) but it's my understanding that most of the company's driver incentives are structured similarly to the reputable parts of the trucking industry. Other companies have mile quotas (or inversely, mile bonuses) which further incentivize lying in logs. There are extremely exploitative owner/operator outfits which force drivers to work desperately to pay off their trucks, likely resulting in worse violations. So sure, on paper, the letter of the regulations are followed, but that's definitely not what's happening on the road. > And when they're not it's typically some local outfit delivering fuel or groceries, not the long haul mega fleets Even if there were true (which it isn't), a head on collision with a sleeping local fuel delivery driver is just as deadly as a head on collision with a long haul trucker. This is irrelevant.