S.A.E. SAFETY/TECHNOLOGY FORUM

COMMENTS OF

JIM JOHNSTON, PRESIDENT OF OOIDA

I would first like to say that I am extremely pleased that the subject of emerging truck safety technologies has been given such high visibility at this S.A.E. meeting.  I am even more pleased at the opportunity to present the views of small business truckers on this important subject before such an extremely influential group of decision makers.

It might be helpful to your consideration of my comments, to provide you with a bit more background on OOIDA so that you will have a clearer understanding of where we are coming from with our position on the various issues involved.

OOIDA currently has 58,000 members who collectively operate approximately 80,000 trucks.  The majority of our members, approximately 70%, own and operate one single truck.  Another 25% are small fleet operators, most between 2 and 10 trucks in size, with a small percentage as high as 20 to 30 trucks.  The remaining 5% are drivers.  The vast majority of our members, probably 90%, own and operate class eight trucks in over-the-road as opposed to local operations. 

The Association has several wholly owned subsidiary companies structured to provide and administer the Association’s member benefit programs.  These companies are operated as for-profit entities, with all profits, after taxes, returned to the Association to help fund its representational efforts.  A very significant portion of our member benefits are insurance related.  In fact, in conjunction with insurance company partners and various risk retention programs, we are probably close to, if not the largest, single insurance provider to small business truckers in the country.

In terms of total insured values just in truck physical damage, cargo and public liability, we currently have out on the road, approximately three billion dollars worth of exposure.  In life, health, disability, and occupational accident coverage’s, we have an additional exposure of over six billion dollars.  All of this exposure is covered by annualized insurance premiums of approximately fifty million dollars.

The reason for giving you all of this seemingly unrelated information, is that often when we speak out or take a position against some proposal or technological fix that others may be pushing as the next sure-fire cure all to the “truck safety problem”, we seem to be perceived by some folks as, “Just them damn owner-operators again wanting to run faster and longer with no regard for the safety consequences.”

So all of this is just to convey to you that in addition to the very deep concern we have for the safety of our members, and for highway safety in general, we also have a very substantial monetary interest in meaningful improvement to commercial vehicle and highway safety.  To quote my friend Tom, from his time at ATA, “Safety is good business.”  It was true then, and it’s just as true now.

The problem, and where Tom and I often came to a difference of opinion, is over what may simply give the appearance of doing something about commercial vehicle safety and what would actually produce meaningful results.  Many of the regulatory changes that have been implemented over the past two decades such as drug testing, increased roadside inspections, and the CDL, would in my opinion fit more into the first category, the appearance of doing something, than the second, of producing meaningful results.  One could argue that these initiatives have been the reason for the industry’s continually improving safety performance.  But the fact is that the industry’s safety performance, as well as highway safety in general, has with the exception of a few blips been improving at a fairly consistent rate ever since the first vehicles hit the road (and each other).  No significant changes to this trend can be identified at, or around, the implementation time of any of the three initiatives I have mentioned.  The reason of course, is there are many other factors involved, not the least of which is improved vehicle technology and improved highway design.

This is not to say that to some degree, the three referenced regulatory initiatives aren’t needed.  We do need some commercial vehicle inspection and enforcement presence, but not to a level where it becomes harassment; a burden to interstate commerce; and is perceived by truckers as just another government money generating scheme.  It’s also important to perform realistic cost benefit analysis.  Are we throwing hundreds-of-millions of dollars at the wrong end of the problem?  I think we are.

Driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol is unacceptable and must not be tolerated under any circumstances.  But in my view, training officers and supervisory personnel in detection techniques, coupled with only probable cause testing, would be even more effective than the costly and burdensome system currently in place.  A system that continually requires honest, hard working truckers to go through the humiliating and degrading process of proving that they are not drug users.  It wastes resources testing and re-testing people who wouldn’t think of using drugs, while those who do can and do find the way to continue as though the rules didn’t exist.

The commercial drivers license was necessary because previous to its implementation, you could get a license to drive a class eight truck in some states by taking the driving test in a car.  “We supported the CDL program, but unlike some, we did not see it as any magic bullet solution to the truck safety program.”

The problem is these initiatives were, and still are, assigned by many with far too much significance in what they can accomplish in improving commercial vehicle safety.  The philosophy seems to be, if it isn’t accomplishing the intended purpose, then we just need to do more of it.  Unfortunately, like the board that can be held with just two nails, but you put in ten to hold it better, only to find that the wood splits, we also reach a point of diminishing and even negative returns in over doing regulatory enforcement schemes.  The diminishing returns in this case, are evidenced, at least partially, by the current driver shortage and the accompanying reduction in company hiring standards - more hiring of inexperienced, less qualified drivers, importing foreign nationals, and even now the efforts to reduce age limits.

The current insurance crisis facing motor carriers is not a result of anything insurance companies have done.  It is the result of reduced hiring standards over the past several years that because of insurance settlement lag-time, is just now starting to catch up with them.  And barring some dramatic change, it’s all down hill from here.  Many of the best driver candidates are smart enough that they won’t long tolerate working in a profession where they are treated as second class citizens, or even criminals where they are villainized by federal and state enforcement agencies who may need to find a constant supply of bad guys in order to justify their continued funding.  Trucker’s aren’t the bad guys.  They are good, hard working citizen’s who perform a very important job that the entire nation depends on for its prosperity, and even for its very existence.  We are losing more and more of these type people everyday simply because the rewards just don’t justify the aggravation.

The real tragedy here is that while we have been spending hundreds-of-millions, if not billions of dollars on these schemes, we have ignored or discarded the obvious and most meaningful solutions, because they may have been politically unpopular.  Mandatory driver training, for example – isn’t it a bit outrageous that while people such as hairdressers, barbers, and insurance agents are required to go through formal training prior to being licensed, you can still get a license to drive an 80,000 pound truck with no formal training whatsoever?

I commend Julie and her department for finally getting this issue back near the top of the agenda, but it has been almost a decade now since OOIDA succeeded in gaining passage of legislation requiring DOT to make a determination of whether or not mandatory driver training was needed.  I hope we won’t be another decade awaiting a final decision and implementation.

Specifically in addressing emerging new safety technologies, while we very definitely support research and development of systems that will contribute toward meaningful improvement in commercial vehicle and highway safety, we have some of the same reservations I have expressed, regarding some of the current regulatory and enforcement policies.

Black boxes, for example, and I realize the term means different things to different people, I will address two systems currently under active consideration.  First, is the system contained in the FMCSA Hours-of-Service Proposal, also supported by NTSB.  This black box would serve as an electronic surveillance system for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing commercial driver’s compliance with hours-of-service regulations.

Setting aside the very obvious constitutional issues involved in subjecting private citizens to constant surveillance for purposes of law enforcement,  and looking at it just from the perspective of whether or not it would make a meaningful contribution to improved highway safety, we conclude that it would not.  In fact, we are convinced that it would have the reverse effect, causing truckers to drive when they might otherwise choose to be resting.  The system wouldn’t tell the driver when he was fatigued, nor would it prevent him from driving while fatigued.  It would simply require him to stop at a specified time that some bureaucrat in Washington thinks he should be tired.

If the driver does feel drowsy while he still has hours to work, he will be unlikely to stop.  First, because he can’t afford to lose the driving time, and second, because if he still has driving time available, he will be expected and pressured by the customer and company management to continue working.  Under the current system, and even though it may at times involve a bit of fudging on the log book, he has the flexibility to stop and rest when he feels tired and to drive when he feels rested.

The solution to hours-of-service enforcement is not more and more intrusive technology and stricter enforcement that deprives drivers of their rights and pushes them even deeper into the feeling that they are considered less than honest law abiding citizens.  The solution is to develop practical rules that make sense and allow the driver (who is really the only one who can determine when he is tired and when he is not), the flexibility to operate according to the dictates of his own body.  Then, give him the support he needs to counter the outside pressures that would attempt to force him to operate beyond his limits.

Our members won’t tolerate this unwarranted intrusion into their rights and freedom, and we, as an Association, will use all of the resources at our disposal to prevent it from being implemented.

Black box incident recorders for the purpose of accident investigation - unlike airline accidents, there is usually adequate evidence at the scene of a highway accident, including witnesses and events leading up to the accident, to determine both the cause and who was at fault.  While event recorders could provide some additional information, the downside risk, from an insurance liability standpoint, would far outweigh the value of the additional information provided.

Granted, there would be incidents where the event recorder may exonerate the trucker.  However, any infraction whatsoever on the part of the trucker, regardless of how minor and whether or not it contributed to the accident in any way, would create huge liability exposures.  If for example, a car load of 16 year old kids ran a stoplight in front of a truck, and the trucker was found to have been traveling just a couple of miles per hour over the speed limit, I can almost guarantee you we would pay out a million dollar claim.  Event recorders in all vehicles would alleviate this concern and create more of a balance.  But please don’t ask us to go first and hope someday everyone else has one as well.  I’m not sure the industry could afford the insurance cost.

As to some of the other systems either already available or on the drawing boards, I am reminded of a comment made by one of the engineers at DaimlerChrysler to a group of government and industry representatives that I was privileged to accompany on a European Truck Technology Safety Scan a couple of years ago.  He said, “Beware of technology happiness.”  And he went on to describe, in detail, the interaction between human factors and vehicle technology improvements.

For example, if you drive a vehicle that can stop on a dime, as opposed to a few car lengths, there is a natural human tendency to reduce safe distance tolerances accordingly.  Using the same theory, it makes sense that if the vehicle is equipped with a frontal collision avoidance system that allows the driver to detect other vehicles in reduced visibility, there will be those who will drive faster at times of reduced visibility simply because of their increased comfort level that they can detect an obstacle in time to take evasive action.

The same theory could be applied to lane guidance and stability, and rollover warning systems.  Again, this doesn’t mean there can be no benefit to such systems, but like the gentlemen said, we should “avoid technology happiness” and not look at these systems as some new magic fix that will solve all our problems.  In fact, they may just cause new problems that could be worse than the problems they resolved.

In short, do we put all of our resources into building foolproof vehicles, or do we invest adequate resources to avoid putting fools behind the wheel to start with?