"Big Brother" threatens drivers and management alike
By James Aaron Cooke, Executive Editor -- Logistics Management, 10/1/2004
Big Brother in the cab. Truckers have called up that Orwellian image whenever the federal government has proposed placing on-board recorders in truck cabs to monitor compliance with the hours-of-service (HOS) rules that regulate drivers' schedules. Although truckers have managed to defeat those proposals in the past, the federal government is once again considering such a requirement as a way to comply with the Supreme Court's recent order to revamp the HOS regulations.
Are truckers' worries justified? To see what could happen here, it's worth taking a look at Europe's experiences with onboard monitors. When mandatory monitors were first proposed in Europe, the trucking unions decried the devices as "spies in the cab," recalls Jack Semple, news editor for Motor Transport, Logistics Management's sister publication in the United Kingdom. But the unions lost that battle, and an automated driving log has been mandatory in much of Europe for decades, he says.
In 1978, the United Kingdom was one of the last members of the European Union to adopt a requirement mandating tachographs in trucks. The tachograph is a clock-like device in which a stylus marks a wax-covered paper disk to record a truck's movements. "You have one for every day of operation," explains Deputy Editor Toby Clark. "It shows the speed maintained at every moment and the distance traveled." The days of the mechanical tachograph appear to be numbered, however: European Union governments are planning to replace them with a digital version as early as next year.
Although drivers feared the government would use the tachographs to crack down on wayward behavior, they were initially used to track compliance with the European Union's hours-of-service rules. It's only recently that authorities have used tachograph data to prosecute operators for motor vehicle offenses such as evading speed limits.
Although most large trucks in the United Kingdom are required to have engine governors that limit speeds to 53 miles per hour, authorities are clamping down on violations at lower speeds. "You're starting to see enforcement authorities looking at tachograph charts," says Semple. "If the speed limit is 40 and they're doing 50, they'll prosecute."
In an unusual twist, UK authorities are now using tachograph data to hold employers accountable for the actions of their driver employees. "If the driver gets in an accident and he's exceeding the speed limits or hours-of-driving regulations, the driver will go to jail," says Semple. "Now the employer will go to jail as well."
Semple recounts a recent court case regarding a death caused by a truck accident. Authorities examined the motor carrier's tachograph charts and discovered a pattern of drivers breaking various laws. As a result, the court ordered the carrier's owner to jail for four years for manslaughter on the grounds that the employer should have know about the law-breaking behavior of its employees.
If Europe's experience holds true over here, then it won't be just truck drivers who should be worried about Big Brother looking over their shoulders—management will be under surveillance too. Trucking industry executives should press for some exemptions in the law, or it won't be long before they could personally face jail time for hours-of-service violations.
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