Opinion: Making Significant Safety Improvements

By Herb Schmidt, Contract Freighters Inc.

There is still a lot of talk around the industry about the Department of Transportation’s announced “national initiative” to cut the number of truck-related fatalities in half within the next 10 years. While I applaud this initiative, I continue to read with amazement how the “good guys” [the Department of Transportation] are going to audit, fine and penalize the “bad guys” [trucking industry] into some kind of safety Nirvana.

Whatever happened to the age-old concept of teamwork and cooperation? For goodness sakes, we share the same goal! It’s not as if safety has been overlooked in this industry.

Our industry accident trend has been one of steady improvement, especially over the past decade. Carriers that ignore safety in the name of making greater profits generally go broke in the competitive environment we work in today. Check with Wall Street if you doubt that the safest carriers also tend to be the most profitable.

Just as in any other industry, the old 80/20 concept holds true in transportation — 20% of the people create 80% of the industry’s problems. We won’t have any impact on the 20% by doubling inspections at permanent scale sites, by auditing and re-auditing the same large carriers over and over, or by quadrupling the fines for equipment and log violations.

The way to attack the real problem is to fan inspectors out with mobile inspection sites on the well-known routes that are used to bypass scales. Rather than directing all the tough talk toward trucking in general, why not focus on the non-compliant 20% that we collectively need to take out of service? These are the people who tarnish the name of the hardworking professional drivers and companies in the industry.

There has been a lot of speculation about changes to our antiquated hours-of-service regulations. There is even some talk about the possibility of changing the regulations to 10 hours driving followed by 14 consecutive hours off duty.

I hope a more logical solution prevails. I have asked the opinion of numerous professional drivers (focusing on those with outstanding safety records), and the opinions have been much the same. There are many occasions when the regulations require drivers to shut down before their biological clocks are ready. They simply are not tired, and consequently, are unable to rest or sleep. As one driver explained, “Rest isn’t something that you can turn off and on like a toggle switch. The need for it is driven by a lot of variables, and there is no better judge of when it is needed than the person behind the wheel.”

While most of the drivers agreed that there should be “at least” a nine-hour off-duty requirement for each 24 hours, they felt the professional driver should be the one to choose when to rest. For those who refuse to use good judgment, fine the dickens out of them and suspend their driving privileges — make it a big deal!

The implementation of intelligent transportation systems is another area where money from the new safety initiative could be spent. Active technologies could provide drivers with weather and traffic information, which would result in better routing and driving decisions. The ability to flag a driver to bypass a scale, when he or she has already passed inspection in an adjacent state, would help relieve the overcrowding and the exiting-merging hazards at busy scale locations. Weigh-in-motion technology would insure compliance in an area that is personnel-intensive and rather slow today.

The concept of paperless permitting and other paperless regulatory compliance issues should be aggressively pursued, as this would allow more resources to be focused on inspections, which have a direct impact on highway safety.

The old saying, “You get what you inspect,” is true. This is especially true if the inspections are focused where they are not expected — mobile sites on secondary roads.

Yet another area where industry and DOT could work together is driver training. Private financing for truck driver trainees and driver training schools is not a favorite of the banking community these days. There is, however, a tremendous demand for the services of quality drivers. Correspondingly, quality driver training schools are much needed as well. Our industry has voluntarily developed an effective minimum training standard with the Professional Truck Driver Institute, but it is expensive to train to this proven standard. Federal assistance is much needed.

There are indeed many ways for DOT and the trucking industry to work together to accomplish the goal of cutting the number of truck-related fatalities in half. Excessive intimidating, mandating, regulating and penalizing will only slow progress. Let’s stop the “good vs. evil” rhetoric and focus on the 20% who are creating 80% of the problems. Working in an environment of trust, DOT and key people from trucking could virtually guarantee the success of the national safety initiative.