
Trucks Are Killing Us - nkzednan
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/opinion/the-trucks-are-killing-us.html
======
WalterBright
Driving on I5 from Seattle to Portland is now a long line of semis, one after
the other. Trucks, even loaded to the legal limit, cause 9,000 times as much
fatigue damage to the road as a car (fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the
weight).

It's inefficient and environmentally absurd to use trucks that way. Railroad
tracks parallel I5. The solution is to pick the container off the semi, put it
on a railcar, do the intercity haul on the rails (which are made for heavy
loads) with minimal fuel and manpower costs, pick it up and put it on a truck
to do the last mile in the destination city.

So why isn't this done now? Highways are subsidized by cars (fuel taxes), and
railroads are taxed. The incentives are backwards.

What I'd do is significantly raise the weight taxes on trucks on the
interstates, and use that money to subsidize the rail right-of-way.

~~~
netfire
I agree that rail seems ideal and much more economical and environmentally
friendly, but is the system designed to handle consumer shipping with its
demands for quick delivery with tight deadlines? (Which I'd argue constitutes
a large portion of truck-based freight)

How much longer does it take to load/unload a freight train versus a truck?
How much slower is the train and how longer does it take to ship? (and how
does that affect cost or product quality when shipping items that must be
refrigerated in transit?) Is it a realistic option for same-day or overnight
shipping required for services like Amazon Prime in the volume that is
currently being carried by trucks?

For items where delivery is not urgent, I'm all for using rail, but with
expectations from consumers for quick delivery, its hard to see how they will
be able to compete on the current system for rail-based freight.

An alternative (at least in the short-term), might be to create truck-only
traffic lanes or highways with tolls and fewer exits. (and other lanes or
highways just for cars) The lanes could be built to withstand the additional
weight from the trucks, and non-truck traffic would run more efficiently and
safely.

~~~
WalterBright
If people are willing to pay weight fees that reflect the true cost of fixing
the road damage, they can continue to use the trucks. But why should taxpayers
pay for 2 day delivery instead of 3 day by rail?

~~~
jdc
I'd guess job creation, possibly with a side of union influence.

~~~
jdc
Do any of the down voters have another point of view they would like to share?

------
rcarrigan87
I'm all for the safety arguments being made by the author but he does paint
the trucking industry as this huge money making business when that really
isn't the case.

Trucking is a very low margin business. These guys live and die based on
controlling costs. It's an industry where innovation is very hard because you
really need to justify every dollar spent on R&D.

Quoting $700B total industry revenue and saying there's room to spend on
safety is meaningless... Would love to see a more in depth analysis on the
issue from a financial perspective.

~~~
Aloha
The article bothered me because of the presumption that the author made about
hours of service, and as a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the
HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller
ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to
working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep
schedule - so while you can be compliant with the HOS, you've still not slept
any - because you just spent 4 days working days, and now you're expected to
pick up a shipment at 11pm and run with it until out of hours for the day..
not practical or safe.

The other thing that irritated me was the presumption that trucks have no
safety hardware - I personally wouldn't want to drive a truck with collision
avoidance stuff, not unless I had a ton of time to spend with it to understand
what it does in an activated situation - that said, most trucks do have ABS,
airbags are meaningless in a truck, you're so much larger than the other
vehicles that a driver doesn't need airbags to stay safe, and airbags do
nothing to enhance the other drivers safety, they just add cost for no real
benefit.

~~~
rcthompson
What would you think of a rule that said you could only continue driving if
you have slept for at least 6 of the past 24 hours? (I'm not sure what the
exact numbers should be, but you get the idea.)

~~~
BurningFrog
Sounds like a sensible rule that is impossible to enforce.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
In Germany, trucks are required to have trip recorders. The police can (and
will) check them to see if the minimum resting times were observed. Don't
american trucks have something similar?

~~~
nickff
Logs are kept, but the posts above are making the point that drivers should be
required to sleep a certain number of hours of the past 24 hours. Logs do not
help you with this, unless you are using a sleep tracking device.

~~~
michaelt
If your legal standard is "no more than 10 hours driving in any continuous 24
hour period, and at least 9 hours of continuous rest period" you don't know
for /sure/ that the driver will sleep in the 14 hours they're not driving, but
why wouldn't he/she?

~~~
MichaelGG
I guess it's because they might be shifting to a new schedule and it wasn't
feasible to change sleep patterns? So if you get in at 00:00 one day, sleep
until 08:00. Then you don't get a new assignment until 02:00 the next day day,
you will have the necessary gap, but not have had any real way to have slept
the right time. You would have needed to force yourself to sleep in the
afternoon/evening, and, even with drugs, that is a hard thing to pull off.

------
macNchz
Self-driving trucks seem to have such great promise to improve the safety and
efficiency of the trucking industry and our highways in general. Even if
they're only self-driving during the long haul sections and human drivers take
over for local deliveries it would make a huge difference.

Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial
barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a reality.

~~~
notNow
I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US.
Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised
safety?

Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole
political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income
distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat
who exchange their labor in return for capital to make a living.

~~~
robbrown451
If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might
be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a
decade or two.

In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased
the quality of life.

Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early
1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works project.
Chinese workers were building a canal. Friedman was struck by seeing everyone
digging the canal with shovels. Friedman asked the official, "why no heavy
earth-moving equipment?" The official said, "oh, this is a jobs program." So
Friedman then says to the official, "then why don't you just give them spoons
instead of shovels to create even more jobs?"

~~~
notNow
Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to
discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr.
Evil:

Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-
scale job opportunities

Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net
positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities.

Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net
negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super
white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us.

Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not
politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor
& lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100%
efficiency boost?

Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower
median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your
gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and
truckers-turned-criminals on the street?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Look at this the other way - humans _shouldn 't even be doing this task_, the
only reason we have truck drivers is because we didn't know how to make trucks
drive themselves. Now we do, so there's no point in keeping humans doing what
machines could do better.

Yes, this generalizes to all jobs and the entire economy. It's about time we
accepted it.

------
jfhubbard
I'm the CEO of SpeedGauge - a safety and performance company that uses data
from 3rd party GPS trackers to monitor and coach hundreds of thousands of
commercial vehicles in the US. We use standard GPS tracking data to understand
and improve driver speeding behavior - clearly the cause of the crash that
critically injured Tracy Morgan and killed James McNair.

From our experience with fleet customers we can see that there is a split in
the US trucking industry between those companies that eagerly spend to improve
safety and fuel economy and those that think they can't afford it and
therefore fight regulation and mandates.

Many companies are way ahead of the regulators when it comes to safety and
fuel saving technology and practices. Just look at which companies voluntarily
govern their vehicles to a fuel efficient max speed (say 62 mph) vs those that
let trucks roll at higher inefficient speeds. Or, look at those companies that
have invested in telematics to get improvements in safety, operations and fuel
economy and those that resist any such mandate.

Police and inspection based monitoring system (ie. current US DOT CSA regime)
allow effective comparison of risk patterns at the aggregate level for large
fleets but statistically are invalid at the single driver level because of the
paucity of data (even risky drivers don't get in accidents very often). Fleets
need more granular data to evaluate individual drivers. Sadly in this
incident, it was Walmart, who maintains one of the highest aggregate safety
ratings in the industry, that failed to identify the granulal events that put
their driver, and the driving public at risk.

Transportation is a tight margin business and solutions need to work within
the capital and operational constraints of the market and the reality is that
smaller and independent players often don't have the capital to invest (nor do
many telematic solution providers direct efforts to micro-fleets). Our
customers' experience is that safest drivers are the most profitable drivers
(and the best paid). While I am a strong supporter of fair government
regulation, I remain hopeful that technology can in fact lead that way by
pointing out that safe operations are profitable operations.

~~~
cs702
Welcome to HN.

What are your thoughts on rail as an alternative to trucks?

~~~
jfhubbard
I am a strong supporter of intermodal; trucks & trains have got to work
together. I think that trains are part of the solution to truck driver
shortage plus they have lots of other benefits (environmental etc..).

I think that there is a great opportunity to make intermodal more efficient
and to create more truck/train interface points and to make them more
efficient. A lot of work to do. Opportunity for big application of capital AND
software.

~~~
Aloha
I'm a former OTR driver now working in telecom and as a sysadmin (still with
active CDL however).

How do you propose to solve the delay issues at each end of the rail journey,
do you think shippers can be made to accept longer transit times? I'd love to
see the median length for a TL trip come down to like 150 miles.

~~~
jfhubbard
How do I propose to solve the delay issue? I don't have a solution but I think
that there is a lot of value in finding one!

I guess that that is part of what I was hinting at when I said that the
solution needed a lot of capital investment and software. There is a lot of
work to do and a lot of investment to be made.

I wish that some of the effort that was going into self driving vehicles would
go into making intermodal operations smoother. I think there would be a huge
payoff.

------
hyperpape
I'm not able to comment on all parts of the article, but one thing stuck out
at me: deaths were up from 2009-2013, but so was the volume of freight being
shipped:
[http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVa...](http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVar=TRUCK).
That makes that particular statistic quite dubious.

Disclosure: I work for a SAAS company serving the logistics industry, which is
why I knew that. I don't really have an opinion about how regulated the
industry is. My personal work doesn't deal with that, and I'm pretty ignorant
of it. I'm quite willing to believe that this article is accurate at the big
picture level.

~~~
mcguire
While we're talking dubious statistics,

" _While heavy trucks accounted for less than 10 percent of total miles
traveled in the United States during 2013, according to federal data, the
N.T.S.B. recently reported that they were involved in one in eight of all
fatal accidents..._ "

I would like to point out that "one in eight" is 12.5%.

~~~
bargl
They are also only using fatal accidents and not all accidents. I'm assuming
that truck accidents are more likely to be fatal than non truck accidents but
I have no data.

------
jessaustin
_The trucking industry... insists that it needs longer work weeks... so that
more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says could result in more
accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to be buying it._

Yeah that makes zero sense. If drivers are driving more, trucks will be on the
road more. The actual result of sane work hours would be that more drivers
would share trucks and drive in shifts, which is already fairly common. If
sharing trucks is somehow impossible, then the industry could buy more trucks,
to be parked waiting for their drivers to become available. Neither truck
sharing nor additional parked trucks are a danger to the public.

It's my understanding that drivers are typically paid by the mile. Therefore,
it's difficult to see why trucking companies care about lower speeds or
shorter work weeks. If a driver drives less, she'll be paid less. It's almost
as if they're saying that there are no more drivers available at current
mileage compensation rates. Since this is HN, I won't suggest higher
compensation, but perhaps they could investigate the H-1B program?

~~~
A_COMPUTER
You joke, but for years now certain corners have been trying to open it up so
so that Mexican trucks/drivers to operate in the USA.

------
nulagrithom
> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the
> current 70 hours over eight days, by eliminating the requirement that
> drivers take a two-day rest break each week;

There was a different problem with the two-day rest break:

> Must include two periods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. home terminal time.

Because obviously the trucking industry shouldn't be working graveyard. That's
the part that was suspended. It screws with scheduling. 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. is
arbitrary.

[http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-
service/summary-h...](http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-
service/summary-hours-service-regulations)

> discouraged the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from investing
> in wireless technology designed to improve the monitoring of drivers and
> their vehicles;

Either this is VERY recent news or just misleading. This is happening as far
as everyone can tell. The mandate for electronic logging devices in all
vehicles should be coming down late September, with a deadline of October
2017.

[http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-
sends...](http://www.ccjdigital.com/e-log-mandate-advances-fmcsa-sends-rule-
to-white-house-for-approval/)

[http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-
begin-t...](http://www.overdriveonline.com/eld-mandate-poised-to-begin-two-
year-countdown)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Shouldn't the trucking industry be working _mostly_ graveyard? I mean, what's
the better time for trucks to drive fast and safe if not night, when everyone
else is not on the road?

~~~
wpietri
The best time for _trucks_ is at night, but trucks don't drive. Humans drive
trucks, and humans are diurnal animals.

------
yoo1I
> Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American
> Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014.

So the same guy who wrote the piece has for 16 years been directly responsible
for the lobbying he is decrying. Anyone know what's going on there?

~~~
closetnerd
Maybe he's realized the inevitability of the situation and decided to jump
ship. Can't completely blame him, but makes it difficult to take his opinions
seriously.

~~~
rwallace
Be very careful with that line of thinking. It amounts to 'he's a bad person,
so we should punish him by assigning him low status, and part of that is to
refuse to take his opinion seriously.' It's instinctively appealing, but it's
also an area where human instinct is terribly wrong.

A better way to react would be 'it looks like he's done bad things, so when he
talks about those bad things, he knows what he's talking about and we should
take his opinion very seriously. Whether he should be punished is a separate
question, but if so, that punishment should take a form that doesn't cripple
our ability to stop the other people who are continuing to do those bad
things.'

~~~
closetnerd
Fair enough. Though again, I do sincerely sympathize with him. If my
assumption is true, he did what he did for survival of a form. Fine in my
book.

------
kylemathews
This is why many people believe self-driving trucks will be even more
significant than self-driving cars. Especially as we start to commute less as
telepresence improves and more jobs can go remote.

~~~
jessaustin
OK, just as long as trucks aren't driven through telepresence. Drone operators
in the trucking industry might challenge their military brethren in terms of
innocent people killed.

~~~
rectang
If trucks were operated as drones, wouldn't that make managing hours and
handing off from one driver to another much easier?

------
jerrac
Driving while tired can be as dangerous as driving drunk. The occasional 14hr
drive isn't horrible, but if you do that several days in a row, you're going
to be really tired. So limiting the hours per day a truck driver drives seems
like a good idea. As does "shift" driving.

Collision avoidance tech also seems like a good idea.

That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything.

Drivers can unionize and demand better hours. Insurance companies can require
collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc.

And if you really believe the government needs to be involved, then it doesn't
hurt to try both the government regulation route, and the self-regulation
route at the same time. The latter could get implemented faster than the
government....

~~~
copsarebastards
> That said, I don't think we need the government to do anything.

I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion looking at this data.

> Drivers can unionize and demand better hours. Insurance companies can
> require collision avoidance tech be installed. Etc.

Many things can happen, but they _aren 't_ happening, so...

~~~
mcguire
Drivers are frequently the ones complaining about the hours-of-service
regulations. They get paid by the mile but many of their working hours are
non-driving, so more hours on the road is more money.

Drivers unionizing (That would be the Teamsters, right?) to demand fewer hours
seems roughly as likely as programmers unionizing to demand something better
than _their_ 80-hour weeks.

~~~
jerrac
Would an awareness campaign about the dangers of drowsy driving help?

As for unionizing, why mention Teamsters? Just have each companies employees
get together and negotiate with management. (Yes, I'm being purposefully
naive. Even if this really won't work, it should still be tried first.)

~~~
copsarebastards
> (Yes, I'm being purposefully naive. Even if this really won't work, it
> should still be tried first.)

Why should it be tried first? This kind of experimentation takes decades and
meanwhile people are dying. How many times do we have to try waiting for
corporations to do the right thing before we acknowledge that corporations are
amoral and aren't going to do the right thing? How many unions do we have to
try before we see that they don't really promote progress?

------
thedogeye
It's rather disingenuous to compare truck crash fatalities to plane crash
fatalities. Almost everything kills people more often than plane crashes.

~~~
apendleton
Yes, so why is air travel so much more heavily regulated for safety than all
the other things? The perception is skewed, and people just don't think about
motor vehicle collisions as being a big problem, even though they kill tons of
people every year (more than firearm homicides, too, for what it's worth).
Pointing that out is reasonable.

~~~
Retra
It's because those people die all at once in a way they can't control or
escape. With car accidents, people are perfectly content to believe they are
skilled enough drivers to be able to avoid death.

------
MiguelVieira
The author makes several good points, but never mentions fault. From a 1998
study on car-truck collisions:

> the car driver's behavior was more than three times as likely to contribute
> to the fatal crash than was the truck driver's behavior. In addition, the
> car driver was solely responsible for 70 percent of the fatal crashes,
> compared to 16 percent for the truck driver.

[http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfa...](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/04085/)

------
machbio
The Solution is the Train - that I don't understand why has not dominated in
US, though it being a big industry in earlier part of the 20th Century

~~~
joesmo
The cost of running rail to supply all the routes currently served by truck
now (and generally in the last 50-60 years) is so high that it's infeasible.
The less populated and poor the destination, the higher the costs (and most
remote areas are both sparsely populated and poor). I think you're seriously
underestimating the vastness of the US and the remoteness of the majority of
it. Sure, given enough investment and dedication, a nationwide rail network
would have been possible but the decision to build America as a car/truck
country was taken in the late 40's/early 50's and it's too late to reverse
that, even at a governmental level. People expect to live in remote areas now
and have all the comforts of a city. That's simply not possible with rail at a
sane cost. Not only are cars and trucks more flexible, but the transportation
expenses can be shared between commercial and personal transportation. People
in America generally don't take trains (and don't like them) and outside of
small regional areas, passenger trains are mostly a novelty that run sometimes
_days_ late. Between the geography and people's attitudes/expectations, there
is no room for trains in America and it shows.

~~~
spqr0a1
Ah, but road transport isn't really shared between commercial and personal
transportation. Road maintenance is in large part funded by fuel tax. Fuel use
is roughly proportional to vehicle weight at low speed, or frontal area at
high speed. While wear to the road is proportional to the fourth power of the
axle weight.

So trucking is heavily subsidised by smaller cars. If the costs created by
trucking were internalized, the market share in the shipping industry would
likely shift considerably toward rail transport.

~~~
selectodude
Which would be an issue as most major US rail corridors are already running at
peak capacity.

------
mytochar
> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the
> current 70 hours over eight days.

Please tell me that's a typo. PLEASE tell me that's a typo. 82 hours a week is
insanity. Driving any vehicle requires a lot of attention, driving a large one
requires a LOT more attention. And I just have a strong certainty that, if
it's anything like every other industry, it'll be 82 hours a week, every week,
no breaks.

You want accidents and injuries? Make people drive more than 16 hours a day (5
days a week). Or maybe 13.67 hours a day (6 days a week), or even still 11.71
hours a day (7 days a week). Every week.

Wow.

------
discardorama
FTA: " _The trucking industry, through its chief trade group, the American
Trucking Associations, insists that it needs longer work weeks and bigger
vehicles so that more trucks will not be needed on the road, which it says
could result in more accidents. That logic is laughable, but Congress seems to
be buying it._ " .... and later:

" _Howard Abramson is a freelance writer who was an executive at American
Trucking Associations from 1998 to 2014._ "

Gee, I wonder what's the backstory there?

------
jimmyspencerjr
Man, I have always hated trucks, and this is yet another proof of why! But in
all seriousness, this is yet another narrative of Congress' rolling back of
regulations that prove quite beneficial by way of safety and overall welfare
of the nation in favor of vicious profit margins for those warlords of
industry. I certainly hope to see restored a body of lawmakers that can get
their act together and promote the welfare of a healthy, vibrant nation before
the end of my lifetime. We have too many clowns now who are willing to pass
laws or not pass laws in downright stupidity, and I'm not sure if it's out of
sheer corruption or debased philosophical convictions. For myself, this issue
serves as an ideal example of where the government can and should intervene
with laws and regulations and oversight in order to promote general safety and
welfare, not to mention economic fairness, in preventing the exploitation of
the have-nots by the haves. I'm just as weary of government getting too large
and intervening in our private lives as anybody else, but who can argue that
in cases such as truck driving and highway safety in general, the government
cannot easily play a part in saving not only lives but tons of money?

------
microcolonel
>More people will be killed in traffic accidents involving large trucks this
year than have died in all of the domestic commercial airline crashes over the
past 45 years

This is such a slimy apples to oranges comparison. Clearly commercial airfare
is far safer than ANY road ground transit.

After this comparison, I don't feel like reading the rest of the article.

~~~
ORioN63
Yeah, I agree.

Maybe the author should have added the percentage of these truck accidents
compared to all road accidents.

------
aswanson
I have to drive an interstate on my daily commute. I always wonder why the
state troopers, almost without fail, have a semi pulled over on the way in.

Also, I have noticed that truck drivers seem to be as dumb/bad as the average
driver, and there is no particular need to single them out. People in general
are fucking stupid behind the wheel.

------
dougdonohoe
Until self driving machines become a reality, there are startups like Maven
Machines in Pittsburgh that are tackling the problem of driver fatigue thru
innovative use of machine learning.

Site: [http://mavenmachines.com/](http://mavenmachines.com/)

~~~
sillygeese
They might want to pivot into something that's going to be needed in ten
years.

~~~
iMiiTH
Why wouldn't something like this be needed in ten years?

~~~
striking
Theoretically, self-driving machines will be traversing highways fairly
accurately in ten years.

~~~
mcguire
Theoretically, there is no difference between theory and practice.
Practically, however, there is.

(Thanks for letting me use one of my favorite quotes!)

------
jsz0
> the N.T.S.B. recently reported that they were involved in one in eight of
> all fatal accidents and about one-quarter of all fatal accidents in work
> zones

Involved or at fault? It seems like these stats are including accidents where
trucks did not even contribute to the fatalities but were simply part of the
collateral damage.

~~~
douche
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Moose are involved in around 80% of fatal vehicle-animal collisions in the
state of Maine over a five year period[1]. Clearly, moose are a menace, and we
need to dramatically invest in moose-diverting safety features on our roads!

Except... moose-vehicle collisions were only 15% of all animal-vehicle
collisions. Even a cursory look at the physics of what happens in a moose-car
collision explains why moose collisions are disproportionately fatal. Look at
a moose, standing next to a typical compact-to-midsize car[2]. Now look at
what happens when that compact-midsize car hits a moose[3]. The animal's legs
get swept out by the hood/bumper of the vehicle, and the animal's heavy body
crashes down through the windshield and the relatively flimsy roof of the
vehicle, crushing the driver.

A similar thing happens with semi trucks. In many cases, the front bumper of a
truck, and the rear bumper on the trailer, are higher off the ground than the
hood or trunk of a car. So if a truck is involved in a rear-end collision with
a car in front, as often as not the truck goes right over the top of the car,
crushing the occupants of the car underneath.. Or if the car is rear-ending
the truck, the hood and engine mass goes underneath the trailer, but the
windshield and roof is sheared off by the steel bumper and trailer deck, along
with the upper portions of the car's occupants.

I'm not sure you're going to make those physics much safer.

[1]
[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5547a3.htm)
[2] [http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/animal-...](http://boredomtherapy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/animal-size-comparison-8.jpg) [3]
[http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/las...](http://cdn.wideopenspaces.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/last-elknor.jpg)

------
xacaxulu
But no one wants to give up Amazon Prime & other forms of free or discounted
shipping.

------
joaq
I can't think of many worse jobs than truck driving. Long hours, low pay,
threat to lose your job from self-driving cars, high risk... These guys
deserve a higher salary and they should start looking for something else to do
IMHO.

------
everyone
As a cyclist I feel the same way about cars in general, and the stats are
similar.

~~~
fnbr
Actually, I don't think the statistics are remotely similar (at least in the
UK).

In London, for instance, every single cyclist death in 2015 has been due to
the cyclist getting crushed by a truck. [1]

I don't know about the US, but I suspect the statistics would be similar, at
least in cities.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-
cycling/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-
cycling/11702076/The-truth-about-cycling-safety.html)

~~~
everyone
Interesting, are they outright deaths tho? As far as I'm aware the most common
result of car/bicycle collision is not death but some kind of head trauma for
the cyclist, often resulting in brain damage.

~~~
fnbr
That's a good question, and an aspect that I didn't consider. I'd be
interested in hearing the answer if you find it.

------
closetnerd
It might be unfair assume accidents involving trucks are necessarily due to
truck drivers. I think self-driving trucks have many more benefits however
other than possibly reducing accidents.

~~~
joesmo
Over 90% of accidents are caused by human error. That doesn't mean it's
necessarily the truck driver's fault, as there are other drivers on the road.
But if it isn't his fault, it's the fault of another driver. Considering how
long truck drivers drive for and in what conditions, I wouldn't be surprised
if much of that 90% is actually attributed to the truck drivers themselves
instead of other drivers.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
Consider also though that truck drivers are the most thoroughly and
professionally trained and strictly licensed drivers on the roads.

~~~
joesmo
Considered, however that makes no difference when they've been up 12-36 hours
driving. At that point, someone slightly drunk is a better driver.

------
sehugg
In the last cross-country trip I took, the interstates were bumpy and the
country roads were smooth, no doubt in part due to semi traffic.

------
jbeales
I'm not convinced this guy isn't on some vendetta. He only quotes total
numbers, not accidents per thousand miles / deaths per thousand miles.

If I understand the these DOT numbers[1,2] properly the number of truck miles
from 2009 to 2013 has dropped, which would be especially bad if the number of
accidents has ridden, but that doesn't jibe with a) the 2008 recession ending
and b) increased truck sales over the past 5 years[3]. The trucking industry
publications I've been reading are generally in agreement that trucking demand
exceeds capacity, and that demand has been steadily increasing since 2008.

He's right that some of the safety regulations have changed recently, and to
the layman it appears that they have changed to be less safe. For example, as
of this past June, drivers hauling oversize/overweight loads no longer have to
take a 30-minute break that was formerly required. However, part of that
reasoning was that it can be _more dangerous_ for oversize trucks to be
parked, especially at night, than it is for them to continue driving straight
through[4].

The 30-minute break exemption has been granted in several other situations as
well, for example when hauling HazMat that requires the driver to "attend," or
supervise the vehicle even when it's stopped, since this is defined as an on-
duty activity the driver would either have to eliminate the break, or stop
supervising the load, so he/she would have to break a law no matter what, so
it was decided that the 30-minute break would become optional.

About on-truck technology to make the road safer, it's a good idea, but it
needs to work right every time. I've spoken to my business partner about it,
(he's the one who's been through the whole trucking industry from driving
right up to management), and in his other job, where he manages a trucking
company, they've had demonstration units with all kinds of collision warnings,
lane departure warnings, blind-spot warnings, and so on. They found that the
alarms went off way too often when there was no problem - to the point where
none of the drivers wanted to take these brand-new demonstration trucks out on
a run. And the article's posterboy crash - the Tracy Morgan accident, was a
new truck with those bells & whistles installed. The problem there was the
driver's commute time to get to work.

Finally, the article reads as if the trucking industry wants to be unsafe.
This is simply not true. There are jerks that drive trucks, just like there
are jerks that drive 4-wheelers, but there's a culture of safety in trucking
that really impresses me. Safety records for both drivers and companies,
including inspection results, are tracked by the US government. If a driver's
record is too bad no company will take them on, and if a carrier's record is
too bad it will be prohibited from operating. Most of the "trucking industry"
is truck drivers, and a truck driver's top priority is arriving alive and
uninjured.

[1][https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/v...](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/vm1.cfm)
[2][https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/v...](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/vm1.cfm)
[3][http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081](http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=37081)
[4][http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-
haul...](http://www.ccjdigital.com/oversizeoverweight-interstate-haulers-
granted-exemption-to-30-minute-break-rule/)

------
stevewepay
This is why drone technology is very interesting to me. If you have drones
flying around that deliver things directly from docks to warehouses, or
warehouse to warehouse, not only would it be faster, but potentially safer too
(the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population). There's
probably a bunch of ways to regulate this as well, such that in the case of
disaster, the cost of human life is extremely unlikely.

~~~
hammock
>the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population

You mean like railways?

~~~
stevewepay
Drones have the capability of delivering directly to the final destination,
unlike railways.

In fact,Amazon could redistribute their inventory between warehouses overnight
depending on predicted popularity of various items. Or it allows them to have
a gigantic single warehouse with every single item in it, and just worry about
distribution centers as opposed to warehouses that hold inventory. Then every
hour they could send the packages via drones from their central warehouse to
distribution centers where they are immediately put on trucks and sent out.

------
ape4
Something semi-automated like speedlimit signs that radio out info which the
truck receives and enforces seems possible.

~~~
Sanddancer
Signs like those could be a godsend to teenagers out for a prank. Steal one
from a road with a speed limit of 25, and put it on the interstate where the
speed limit's 55, or the opposite, a speed limit of 55 in a 25 zone. I guess
you could potentially add geofencing to the signs, but that means tacking up a
roadsign becomes a lot more difficult as you suddenly need to spend the time
to reprogram signs when you post them.

~~~
jon-wood
Theres no reason they have to be physical signs, just link it to the speed
limit database companies like TomTom seem to have for their GPS units and use
that. There's always the problem of keeping that up to date, but its no harder
than the problems that would have to be solved for physical signs.

------
golergka
Wouldn't it more effective to just help the natural process of these drivers
being replaced by AI?

------
donatj
> About a mile before the crash, the driver ignored work-zone warning signs on
> the New Jersey Turnpike of likely delays

What was expected here, honestly? Should he have made a note in his notebook?

> About a half-mile later, the posted speed limit dropped to 45 m.p.h. from
> the usual 65, which the driver also ignored.

Truly more often than not the people who do slow down are in the vast minority
and arguably the bigger road hazard.

~~~
lutorm
Highway construction crews must love people like you.

~~~
nitrogen
I'm sure it depends on local driving culture and varies from place to place,
but there are many stretches of road where local drivers completely ignore
posted construction speeds, except for a small percentage who cause dangerous
backups and lane changes. Since worker safety is paramount, the best approach
is using concrete barriers instead of orange barrels in these high speed
zones, not just ignoring the majority of drivers.

