Truck driving is an occupation entwined with American ideals of freedom and machismo.
Technology is threatening the independence of the truck driver. In order to reduce crashes, the federal government mandated that trucking companies use electronic logging devices to record their driving hours.
Is ELDs a vital safety technology? Everyone agrees that adoption restricts the role of human drivers in an industry that employs over 3 million people.
Image: Cornell University
In her new book, Karen Levy explores the impacts of trucking technologies like ELDs. The implementation of the federal ELD mandate led to collaboration and conflict between employers and regulators as they scrambled to comply.
Levy is skeptical of both ELDs and self-driving cars. She wrote.
Humans have flaws, but they aren't a solution. Humans will always be involved in the design, operation, maintenance, use, and oversight of self-contained systems. The idea that humans can't be eliminated from systems is not true.
Image: Princeton University Press
A linchpin of the US transportation system, the blue-collar profession is the subject of her book. The conversation has been edited to make it clearer.
How did you come up with the topic of trucking and technology?
I was a graduate student and a law student at the same time. I wanted to find a place where rules could be enforced through digital power, instead of manually.
The federal government is considering mandating that trucking companies keep their time electronically after 70 years of doing it manually, according to an NPR story. I was happy.
I stopped at a truck stop in Portland. I wanted to see what it was like to talk to the drivers. I was immediately attracted to people who were willing to share their life stories with me even though I had no idea what they were talking about. I have been doing it for a quarter of my life.
You describe the lives of the drivers in your book. Wages have fallen since deregulation 40 years ago. Why are truck drivers still interested in doing this?
Most of the truck drivers say that they don't want someone looking over their shoulder and that they want a job where they have some control over their time.
Being in control of what you do while driving across the country is a romantic idea. It is difficult to find that in other jobs. A lot of truck drivers choose to work in the industry. The central role that trucks play in the global economy is associated with a strong culture of machismo.
Do you ever worry about the truck driver in front of you causing a crash?
I am unworried because I have met many people who have driven millions of miles with no accidents. They know that other drivers make a lot of mistakes and that they have a fatherly orientation towards them.
I know that the experienced drivers are the ones most likely to leave the industry because of the technology I write about. There is more of a push to get 18-year-olds into big rigs. You don't want those drivers next to you on the road.
You don't want those drivers next to you on the road.
The phrase "Knights of the Highway" was used to describe how truck drivers used to be seen. They have a sense of pride and individualism.
People who drive trucks aren't slackers. They know a lot about technology because they have to fix 80–100,000-lb vehicles with very little help. They were big fans of CB radio when they were younger.
If they have accumulated knowledge about how to deal with different driving conditions or their own biophysical state, they are resistant to technologies that affect their sense of self. They are hit pretty hard when confronted with a technological regime that suggests they are liars and cheat.
Which leads to electronic logging devices. They were introduced to us.
Since the 1930's, timekeeping regulations have limited the number of hours a truck driver can drive. There is an open secret in the industry that no one has taken this requirement seriously and that trucking companies often lie about their logs. The logs are not connected to how they are paid. Truck drivers sometimes use chemical aids that are beyond what their bodies can do.
One of the levers the regulators had at their disposal was mandating electronic logging devices. In Washington, there was a 25-year discussion about whether or not trucking companies should be required to log their hours online. The idea was to make it more difficult for truck drivers to break the rules.
In the book, I described how the requirement of ELDs acts as a scaffold that also allows supervision and surveillement by their employer. The companies say you should use a black box that tracks your fuel usage, how hard you brake, and other things because now you have to have this black box in the truck.
Everyone has to buy a phone that makes calls. If you want to buy a phone that only makes calls, you have to buy one that also texts, uses the internet, and so on. That is what happened with trucking and ELD adoptions.
According to you, there is a common refrain among drivers that ELDs treat them like criminals. About 12 percent of all crash deaths in the US are caused by trucking. What should we care about when so many lives are at stake?
That logic makes sense in theory. There is no proof that ELDs make anyone safer. Evidence shows that crash rates have gone up after the ELD mandate and that trucking companies are less safe because they are so closely supervised.
If we're most concerned with safety, this approach isn't a good one.
The flexibility of being able to keep track of time using paper and pencil has always been important to truck drivers. If flexibility is removed, the trucker is less likely to stop for a coffee if he is tired. It suggests that the most important thing is to get from A to B as fast as possible. There are studies showing that speeding has increased since the ELD mandate. If we are most concerned with safety, this approach isn't a good one.
How widespread is the use of driver monitoring systems?
It's quite widespread. It doesn't take much to add another data stream once you've built the capacity into the truck. Tracking driver behavior like real-time speed, as well as more intrusive camera-based or biometric ways to track aspects of the trucker's behavior or body is commonplace.
Your example of a smart cap that vibrates caught my attention. I want to know about that.
The tech is integrated into the hat and the information is transmitted to the supervisor. There are signs that it is looking for. According to the company, the goal is to protect these workers.
There is a seat cushion that vibrates the truck driver if they look like they are falling asleep, as well as technology that can flash lights in the truck driver's eyes if they look sleepy.
I'm not sure what implications it has for driver monitoring systems installed on automobiles. Fast forward to a world where DMS is common. Your car can tell if you are tired or tipsy by sending warnings and then refusing to let you operate it. Do you think the general public will accept the benefits of the system? They are going to be angry.
I think we will see moments of resistance if that happens. If it is controlling people in ways that they were not before, that is even worse. We would expect to see more resistance, as well as more companies selling aftermarket devices that impede the capabilities of the DMS.
Such devices could affect the effectiveness of the system. The popular backlash to safety belt interlocks caused Congress to retreat. Do you think there's parallels between the two?
Maybe people will accept the rules if they see the legitimacy.
A lot of it is down to legitimacy. Maybe people will accept the rules if they see they are legit. It is easy for the mandate to lose public legitimacy if it is poorly implemented or if the technology isn't always working. All bets are finished.
Let's return to trucking. I have heard that trucking is a better use case for automated vehicles than robotaxis because the environment is simpler. Outside the first and last few miles of a trip, highway driving seems to be a lot more predictable than driving in a city. Is it fair or a misrepresentation of the role of the truck driver?
It's a gross misunderstanding of what truck drivers do. They are doing a lot of different things. They have to look at their trucks for safety several times a day, looking for a tie that holds something onto a flatbed or a tire that looks funky. They make sure the system works if the freight is refrigerated. They are making sure things don't get stolen.
When you drive an 80,000-lb vehicle down the road all day, you need these things.
Let me take a stab at that. You are talking about security. It's hard to automate those activities.
Some of those functions could be remotely automated in the future. The timescale is longer than what advocates want. There is no way to conduct visual inspections remotely. We don't have a remote security solution that is as good as having a human protecting freight.
I think it is possible for us to have self-driving trucking within 40 years.
Is the swine flu affecting attitudes towards trucking and technology?
The effectiveness of timekeeping regulations has been studied by the Pandemic. There were a lot of regulations lifted because people didn't have toilet paper. Truck drivers don't have to comply with rules as usual.
It is not impossible to think that within 40 years, we will have self driving trucks.
The accident rates did not go up. Some in the industry are saying to regulators, "You claim we have to have all these rigid rules, and we have to be under your eye in a very precise way, but in an emergency, we can actually do just fine." Why do you think we can't do without the regulations?
It will be interesting to see how that plays out in the Department of Transportation.
What would it take to change the trucking policy?
I would remove the exemption from the fair labor standards act to allow overtime pay for truck drivers.
It would change the way compensation is paid in the industry. It isn't going to solve all the problems, but it will recognize that a lot of work in trucking is uncompensated, like when a truck driver is stuck in traffic or is delayed unloading their cargo. It would be shown to the truck drivers that their work is important.
You seem to think that technology in the trucking industry can't improve safety.
Yes, in an isolated way. I believe technology can be part of a solution that protects people. Beyond economic reform, I don't think tech on its own will do much.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
