Letters to the Editor: Hours of Service Disputed

have been working in highway safety for 30 years plus, including 12 years for a major motor carrier. I have investigated a number of commercial motor vehicle accidents over the years and only two were because of a driver asleep at the wheel.

The Ph.D.s who know so much should get a rider pass and ride along with an over-the-road driver for seven days. They would have to stay awake all the time that the driver does and sleep for eight straight hours in the sleeper berth.

This very seldom happens. After three to four hours, you are awake and doing things to kill time, some of which are either unhealthy or against the law. When the eight-hour stretch is over, you are in worse shape than when you parked the rig.

Harold Hahn

i>Director, Safety and Compliance

ullivan’s Trucking Co.

onca City, Okla.

Let me say that with 25 years of driving experience and no accidents or tickets, the hours-of-service rule has never added to my safe driving, so I was glad to hear they were going to make changes. But what they’ve come up with makes no difference in safety. In reality, it makes it unsafe.

I speak from experience. I made a run recently just to try it out, and what it does now is to make you drive according to the log book and during heavy traffic times, rather than stopping to let rush hour lighten up.

I figure the government met with top trucking executives and they helped them come up with this. But these guys do not drive anything other than their cars and really do not know the pressures of a driver.

If NASCAR let the car owners and their sponsors determine how the cars were to be set up to run and how the driver was to perform his driving skills, there would be a lot more crashes. Some days, driving a truck 500 miles can have the same intensity as a NASCAR driver running 500 miles at Daytona.

The hours rule needs to be changed again, and we need to see hours set in stone for drivers to rest each day. For the restart, be real. With 30 hours, you’re rested — if you really rested. But a driver can be off 40 hours, spending time at home, and be up with a sick child with only five hours of rest. So it’s simple: Drive 10 or 12 hours, but let it be broken up so that at least you can avoid places like Chicago or Atlanta at 5:30 p.m.

The way it is now, stopping for three hours to nap and letting traffic lighten up at the wrong time is totally against the driver. This is not the airlines; this is trucking and we must treat it as such.

John Cantrell

i>Vice President

antrell Logistics

ndianapolis

This letter ran in the Dec. 19-26 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.